Seasons rounds
by s2lou
Summary: Shades For Shades: Nighttime was the only time for them to meet. "She was a traitor." "Isn't that my line?" Rating rather high.
1. Winter storm

**Author's note: Okay, so this works more or less along the same principle as ****What if?****, only it's about Shinichi and Ran. It's supposed to be following the seasons (I know, there's only four seasons a year, but let's assume there's several years to this, okay?). It happened because I realized I had a lot of ideas about Ran and Shinichi which didn't really fitted in ****Tales****, so they're all going to be in this.**

**-**

Winter storm

-

Ran curled up by the fireside and stared into its swirling, red-orange flames, which leaped up and down like thin ribbons disappearing into smoke. She was so close to it she could hear sparkles rocketing and sizzling near her hair. Shuddering, she rubbed her hands against her forearms and tried not to think about the storm that raged outside, about the thundering wind that hit the closed shutters, about the snow-crushing footsteps she almost imagined crawling closer to the fragile shed… and closer… and closer…

Something creaked above her, and she jumped. She opened her eyes and lifted them to the wooden staircase, where Shinichi was standing on the upper landing, holding two brown things that looked like rags.

"Okay," he said, carefully closing the door he'd emerged from, "so this must be some kind of skiing hut. People must have come here and rested a while. There's a couple of bedrooms up here, but they're cold and there's no fireplace." He opened his arms and Ran saw that there were three brown things, not two. "How did we get stuck in here again?" he asked with a twisted smile.

"Got lost in the storm," Ran mumbled, and she was surprised to find her voice much firmer than she'd thought. "Sheltered here." Her mind, however, seemed to be still too cold to get out of telegraphic style.

"Oh yeah, I remember." Shinichi grinned, and she wondered how he could be so lively. He started down the steps. "I found blankets. They're a bit worn out but they'll be warm enough."

"Aren't these animal furs?" Ran asked a little worriedly, watching him advance towards her across the freezing room.

"Oh, come on, Ran," he pouted, handing her one of the blankets. "I know you're an animal-rights activist, and that you spend your week-ends cutting up banderols for the sake of badgers, but would you rather die of pneumonia?"

Ran smiled a little at this and took the blanket. She wrapped it around her while he flattened the third one – a bit larger than the other two – on the mat by the fireplace, and they both sat upon it.

"What time do you think it is?" Ran asked after a few moments' silence.

"Dunno," Shinichi shrugged. "It was three when we left the camp. I think the night fell when the storm began, but I have no idea how long we wandered." He looked around him. "Lucky we've found this place. If we have walked only two yards farther to the left, we would have missed it."

"Yeah…" Shinichi could say whatever he wanted, Ran couldn't rightfully think what was happening to them was lucky, shelter or no shelter. They were obviously stuck in here for many hours, as the storm didn't seem close to calming down.

"They'll come and fetch us when the weather'll be better." She looked up and saw that he was smiling at her. Like always, he could guess when she was okay and when she only pretended to. His voice was warm and soothing, just like when they were two kids and she was afraid of ghosts. Sometimes he would laugh at her unfounded fears, but sometimes he would act like this, try and comfort her.

"You know," he said, she thought more to make her hear the sound of his voice than really to talk. "You really should try and get some sleep. How's your ankle?"

Ran's fingertips brushed against her injured member, which had prevented them to come back to the camp before the storm had begun. She had never skied really well. She winced as a flow of pain gushed beneath her skin, but met Shinichi's eyes with a reassuring smile.

"I'm fine. It's okay, tomorrow it'll be all gone."

Shinichi didn't seem convinced, but he didn't argue. "Sleep then. That way tomorrow will be there sooner."

"But–" She was sleepy, but the idea of them being both asleep while anybody could come in meanwhile was quite frightening.

Shinichi must have followed her train of thoughts. "It's okay," he said. "I'll stay awake and watch over you."

"No!" Ran protested. "Wake me up when you're sleepy and I'll take over the watch…"

Shinichi sniggered a little at this – he knew all too well Ran wouldn't stand to stay awake all alone in such a lonesome shelter, in the midst of a winter storm, while himself was sleeping. She would make up fears and monsters, and take any noise outside for a werewolf approaching. In the morning she'd be so nervous she'd probably welcome their rescuers with karate.

"For now, sleep," he said softly.

"Okay," Ran mumbled listlessly, and settled herself against the chimney, firmly decided NOT to fall asleep.

This was easier said than done. The fireplace and fur blankets had deprived her conviction of the cold that might have forced her to keep conscious. Now, she lay in a small nest of warmth and quietness, while everything around was quite black. She dared not glance at the staircase now. It was too dark up there, and who knew what kind of phantoms could hide in corners Shinichi had not explored? Outside, the storm was thundering against the fragile shed, and Ran, in her absurd fears, thought that it was concentred on it, and that it would never stop, that they might never be able to get out, that they would stay here forever, until they died of exhaustion and hunger…

She opened her eyes warily; she had almost been blown away by her daydreams, and her eyelids were falling with tiredness, as heavy as lead… she fixed her attention upon Shinichi, who was leaning against the chimney as well, staring at emptiness. The fire was swaying and glowing only a few inches from him, and its swirling flames were reflected, slightly darker, in his eyes. They sent gleams of red and golden on his face, streaming sparkles on his hair like a spot of black upon a background of warm light. He hadn't noticed she was watching him, and yet her sight was already misted by the ever-swaying fire and its shimmering…

Next thing she knew, a great crash drummed in to her ears and her eyes snapped up as she awoke convinced that the door had been double-axed open by some psychopath. She hadn't seen anything more than a greyish darkness and a twirling redness that a hand laid on her shoulder and she opened her mouth to yell – but it was Shinichi's hand, Shinichi's eyes that stared into hers and Shinichi's voice that asked worriedly, "Ran? Are you alright?"

"Yes," she said, feeling foolish and angry. So it had been a dream, ne? And she'd gone afraid just for that… "I heard a noise…"

"The shutter," Shinichi said – then, remarking her puzzled gaze, added, "The shutter banged. The storm's calming down but the wind's still strong."

Ran looked over and saw it: a thin slit of grey narrowing and widening slightly in the dark window frame. She felt more foolish than ever.

"I've slept, then," was her flat remark.

"A couple of hours," Shinichi said. "Was it a nightmare or something?"

His thoughtfulness and the care for her in his voice were almost painful. "I don't remember," she lied, drawing up her knees. The storm had really calmed down, but the wind was blowing and its smashing against the snow reminded her vividly of crushing footsteps. She stared into the reassuring gleam of the fire and as asked as though unconcerned, "You don't think anyone could be near, do you?"

"Not in such a storm," Shinichi firmly replied, and then surprisingly, started laughing. "So that's what was worrying you, wasn't it? did you expect some kind of murderer to come up and cut us to slices?"

Ran felt more frustrated than ever. She answered, with less justice then she thought he deserved, "You, Hattori and dad are corpse-cursed, Shinichi. I'd rather not have ourselves as corpses this time…" She shuddered. She knew that in the morning all those fears would seem to her as absurd as they now seemed to him, but the only thought of the world outside, so large and stormy, when they were all alone in a small shed, with no more defences than some karate training, was just too frightening.

She looked over at Shinichi, who was grinning softly at her, as though a way to make her understand how much he thought all of this silly. She observed – not for the first time – that his chest was broad, his arms long, his hands nervous. How comforting it must be like to have those arms around her, to feel this chest under her head, to sense those hands running through her hair…

"What kind of criminal?" He seemed to enjoy himself very much.

"A psychopath with a double-axe," she answered bluntly, but Shinichi only grinned wider.

"You should go back to sleep," he said, softly. He added as an afterthought, "That way, if your psychopath comes and does murder us, at least you won't feel anything since you'll be asleep."

"Oh, yeah, that's a _real_ comfort," Ran exclaimed, and he laughed.

The fire crackled and sizzled for quite a long time before they spoke again. It seemed to be burning higher and higher, Ran remarked, but the night wasn't over yet – what would happen when it would be close to extinction? They only had a few logs to go… she watched them with apprehension each time Shinichi stretched, picked one up, and placed it in the fire. Only nine, eight more left… seven… six…

She lost contact with time. Seconds were passing away at the same rhythm as hours, for all she knew… anyway, what did it matter? the night seemed endless… and it would be, once there would be no logs left, no fire, no warmth…

"Ran."

"What?" she answered without even looking up.

"Do you know you're shivering?"

"I am?" She hadn't noticed. The brown fur had slipped from her shoulders, but even after she lifted it absently back up, she still shuddered. Whether it was from cold, she wasn't sure. Five logs left…

"Hey."

The fur had slipped again, and Shinichi had had to put it back himself, probably thinking she was asleep, since her eyes were only partly open. She hadn't noticed before his hands brushed against her shoulders, and her head shot up. He stopped cold. His face was only millimetres from hers and his fingertips were still grazing against her clothes.

"We-weren't you asleep?" he stammered, and at the sight of the deep blush invading his cheeks, Ran understood.

He loved her. She loved him. Where was the problem? She confessed to him when he was Conan – all right, she didn't know it was him… - and he'd practically told her after he'd defeated the Organization with the aid of the FBI. Heiji and Kazuha had interrupted him that time, and he hadn't tried to tackle the subject again. Their relationship had backtracked to what it was before, as though nothing had ever broken the routine, as though she'd never cried on the phone because of his absence, as though he'd never asked her to wait for him and said he'd come back to her, even if he were dead. They were on the old track all over again, the old lullaby of best friends and not married couple, when they both knew they loved each other.

When she'd been so shy all the days that had followed his coming back, everything, right now, seemed so absurd, as absurd as her own unfounded fears. Why was she seeing that now, when she could've discovered it any time in the whole year that had elapsed in the meantime? Maybe because they were now more close to each other than they'd ever been since 'Conan' had disappeared, maybe because the cosiness of the fragile, closed shed, with the crackling fire and the warm blankets, appeared as a repetition, in less safe and secure, of the winter evenings they'd spent together.

Why had they tried to avoid the questions they were asked all the time, when the answers were just beside them? Why had they kept the relationship they used to lead, when their lives had been altered in a way that permitted no coming back? They'd lived in pretence of the past, when the future was already there, all ready for them.

Was she really the only one to see that now? Couldn't Shinichi discern, too, that truth which had just swooped on her? No; he was drawing back, with a apologize in his words and a smile on his lips… his lips…

She reached out and gave them a very short, rapid kiss. His eyes widened as he looked down at her in astonishment. Actually, he fell back on the rugs and stared.

"Ran…" she had never seen his face so astounded.

"Good night, Shinichi." She smiled at him before she closed her eyes and leant her head back against the mantelpiece. She could imagine him very well now, kneeling by her side with one raised hand, hesitant as to what to do. She wondered, forcing herself to keep her eyes closed, what he was thinking of what had just happened… in the end she'd done the first step…

His lips had felt soft, had tasted bitter. It wasn't a repulsive contrast, but, at the same time, it wasn't what she had expected.

The same lips pressed a soft kiss, as rapid as hers had been, to her cheek.

"Good night, Ran," they murmured to her ear – she felt his warm breath before he drew back.

Strangely enough, when she fell asleep again, she wasn't thinking of ghosts anymore. There were happier memories to remember, and the promise of a white, brand new world waiting for them in the morning, a world on which to build a whole life.

-

**Right, that was random. I didn't even know what I would be writing next line, and the whole thing**** unfolded itself completely.** **Not so much the perfect beginning for a long series as this is -supposed- to be, ne? Ah, well…**


	2. Alternative choices of love and mind

**Author's note: This is a story you should not have read this quickly. I intended the four first oneshots of this series to have their titles related to the seasons (you know, Winter storm, Summer draft, things like that.) But there was this one peculiar story who was just banging on the door and yelling, **_**I wanna be read! NOW!**_** and finally I said yes. I never was able to resist them too long. So here is this for the present – but you should meet Spring blossoms or Autumn's green wind (such crappy titles…) somewhere along the way…**

**I still don't own anything – well, I do, but merely the idea.**

**-**

Alternative choices of love and mind

-

Kudo Shinichi contemplated with profound discouragement the heaps of papers, files, bills, forms needing to be signed, all piled up on his desk in ceiling-scraping columns. They seemed to be growing larger and higher every day, although he tried to get rid of at least a third of it every time he settled to the task.

Like every morning, he had a not-so fond thought for his dear parents, who'd started up into yet _another_ world tour some six months before, leaving to their twenty-two-years-old on the managing of the whole family affairs. He was fairly sure they'd done it on purpose. One past the first shock of 'I'm a six years old' acting, Yukiko Kudo was known as an intelligent woman, and Yusaku Kudo was too well-used to intricate plots of crime scenes, alibis, motives and culprits not to be able to handle all this business with his littlest finger. So either they wanted to test him, or they were simply having fun.

Shinichi glanced at the window and grunted. It was a radiant mid-spring day, and he was stuck in this narrow office – at least it would be larger if there weren't tons of random papers packing the whole place up. The shining, streaming sunlight from outside slid inside through the half-shaded awning, in thin rays glittering with dust between thin rays of greyish darkness. It felt despairingly like jail.

He noticed a heap of papers swaying on top of a collection of clippings and caught them in mid-fly, just before they fell over and slipped and scattered from the desk to the floor. They were envelopes. This morning's mail… without much enthusiasm, he began to sort them out.

Eight were for his parents – two urgent, he would send them after the fugitives – the rest would have to wait at the bottom of a drawer, where they joined a few dozen others. Twelve were addressed to himself, and he flipped through them with a sigh: fangirls, fangirls, fangirls… his fame was growing along with his reputation as a detective. One year before, he would've slid them in his pocket and displayed them to his friends; now, their rightful place was the trash. He could almost hear his father's voice in his ears, 'You see, Shinichi, responsibilities built character. They teach you to discern what's important and what's not…"

"Yeah, yeah, right," Shinichi said out loud, exasperated, and reached out with both hands to catch another pile threatening to turn over. He gave a last longing look at the great familial sakura tree blossoming in the yard, its floating branches swaying in the lukewarm wind, mink-shading the whole atmosphere – and set back to work.

-

Two hours later, he was dishevelled, reasonably wild-haired and on the very brink of nervous exhaustion. He ran his fingers through the jet-black bangs that fell, lopsided, on his face, and was considering delightedly the perspective of a nice mystery book and a great glass of milk when the door was knocked upon and opened without waiting for the answer.

"Shinichi-botchama (A/N: 'little master')," his father's secretary took a hesitant step forward, "there's a person called Mouri asking to see you."

At the name of Mouri, Shinichi's head had shot up. For a moment, he was speechless, exceeded by the events. Then he asked, "Is it a man or a woman?"

"A woman," she answered gloomily, and Shinichi grunted.

"Tell her I'm coming."

The secretary departed, and Shinichi rested his chin on his hand, sighing. This was the last thing he needed; a hysterical magistrate his parents had called some time before when he'd complained about the amount of paperwork he had to deal with, and who had promised to send someone to help. Obviously she'd come herself, not, in all likelihood, to do the job herself, but rather to hold him a sermon and developed reasoning about what a novice he was (he was all too ready to believe that), how much help should be her assistant and consequently, how large should be their fee. He definitely did _not_ need that.

He rearranged his clothes while passing in front of a mirror – at least not to be ill-considered because he arrived in rags – rubbed a chalk-like spot on his collar and took a deep breath before entering the living-room where she was waiting.

As soon as his eyes laid on her, he felt a sharp blow at the back of the head, exactly as if someone had sneaked up from behind him and swatted him. Breath came to lack. For a moment, there was an extreme familiarity in the sight of this young woman, as though he'd met somewhere and hiss body remembered it even if his mind didn't.

That, of course, was impossible, Rational Thinking reminded him; he would know it if he'd met her long enough to feel such a shock at seeing her again. He pushed the nagging sensation away and asked her to sit down.

She certainly wasn't the middle-aged magistrate he'd been expecting. She wasn't older than he was – and very probably a tad younger. She had blue eyes and long raven-black hair that tumbled in the shoulders of her coat; her hands were thin but her handshake firm and decisive, instead of the vague pressure of two limp fingers like most young people's were.

"I don't understand," he confessed once the usual presentations were done with. "I was expecting a woman called Mouri, but–"

"My mother," she interrupted. "She's a friend of your parents…" Remarking his puzzled gaze, she laughed, then explained, "I'm studying to become a magistrate, like her. Since you insisted to get an assistant to help you with your paperwork, she sent _me_, thinking it would be good practice."

_I never _insisted_ for an assistant,_ Shinichi thought indignantly at his parents, but he didn't disclaim. Instead, he discussed the terms of the contract, agreed for a fee, arranged the hours and the first expectations at the end of the week. Mouri Ran was intelligent, concise and conscious of what she was worth, but her smile was soft and warm, and there still was, deep in Shinichi's heart, that weird impression of familiarity and longing…

It had grown so deep and powerful at the end of their hour's conversation that he felt kind of empty when she had to go. He was already anticipating on the moment when he should expect to see her the next morning when a casual remark about the time she should spend on her way back to Tokyo startled him out of his reverie.

"You mean you're living in Tokyo?"

"Yes, of course," she repeated, looking stricken. Her beautiful blue eyes fixed on his with a puzzled frown.

"But that's over a hour and a half's trip from here," he protested – he'd expected her to have found a hotel or a chamber in the neighbourhood. Obviously she hadn't. "You can't make that journey every morning and every night."

She laughed again; she had a very clear laugh, like water springing. "Well, I will have to, won't I?"

"You can't," he repeated. "I can't ask this from you." He spoke automatically, as if the thought had always been in his mind – and, maybe, it had. "But there're a lot of available rooms in this house – we could place you without any trouble…"

"I don't want to bother you," she said immediately.

"You wouldn't. I assure there's plenty of place."

"But the food – the–"

"Ran-san," Shinichi cut in, amused, "if you're going to work for our family, I think it would be time for you to understand that we don't really have much money trouble." A short silence followed this, while he waited eagerly for her answer.

Her eyes were withdrawn. "Well, if it really would mean no problem for you," she murmured, and then smiled up at him so happily that Shinichi's heart suddenly skipped into a sprint.

Well, he thought when he watched her out, waved goodbye as she got in her car, then turned back inside the house, he couldn't say he'd done it out of pure innocence and helpfulness, but at least he was certain to have her at hand's reach until he could solve her mystery.

-

Mouri Ran dropped her pack on the nearest armchair and looked around her. This was a large, comfortable bedroom, directed southward, with neat furniture and a very nice-looking bed. It was an excellent room. She wondered if they were all that hotel-like or if Kudo Shinichi had just wished to impress her, by providing her with one of the best suites.

She was giving a look in the neighbouring office when the only voice she was yet likely to know in this place echoed through the yard, outside the window. She had barely looked up at it that the owner of the voice himself appeared through the wooden, rectangular frame, conversing animatedly with an old, balding man. They stopped right in her sight and kept talking, surrounded with pale, air-floating cherry blossoms. Ran contemplated them. The elder man was probably the house's intendant or something – they seemed to be discussing linen supplies. As for Kudo Shinichi… but for a short moment Ran saw a boy of ten or so, laughing and holding a book, and she almost found herself transported back to that day again, in another reverie…

Then he was twenty again, turning his head toward the person who'd just shouted his name, and Ran stood at the wooden window, one hand on the frame, the file she'd been flipping through now useless in the other.

The woman of some fifty-years-old who'd welcomed her today as yesterday – the secretary, if she'd made out things well – was running towards the two men and began talking as soon as she had reached them. Ran was too far off to as much as guess what she announced them, but she did hear Shinichi-san's exclamation ("She did?") before he rushed away. After a last glance at the bald man and elder woman, whose gloomy look spoke enough for her words, Ran went out of the office and into her room, waiting for him to meet her there.

He arrived in record time, breathless from running. Ran felt the same pang to the heart she'd sensed when meeting him the day before (she would have to get used to it…), as his eyes immediately searched for hers and his warm voice greeted her. He looked in better form, she noticed, and his hair was smoother, but that was probably because he hadn't spent the whole morning buried under paperwork.

"There seems to be a lot of people working in this house," she observed as they walked down a corridor to his office.

"Oh, yes," he frowned, "I don't know how much exactly. A dozen are there permanently, but some others turn in rounds. It's a large estate, so it needs to be attended to," he added as an apologize.

"I suppose," Ran nodded thoughtfully, "that it means intendancy, and yet more paperwork. Do you happen to have a list of the staff somewhere?"

""Probably," he grinned, "in a drawer somewhere. Here's the door." He shouldered it open, and Ran let out a soft whistle; the room was packed. Way up, to the ceiling.

"I see," she murmured, her fingers brushing against a pile of papers which defied Newton's laws of gravity. "There _is_ work to be done." She made her way to the desk, pushing away the files and letters that attacked her.

"I don't know," Shinichi said thoughtfully. "It keeps growing every day, I suspect. I _could_ open that door larger yesterday…" He forced it wider. There was an awful CRACK! and he hurriedly let go of it.

"There are month-old documents in here!" Ran exclaimed, from the desk. "And those are fresh. This morning's mail?" She handed them to him over the desklamp, smiling. "You sure have a lot of fangirls, Shinichi-san." Most of the envelopes were bright pink.

Shinichi looked sheepish. He dropped the letters in the trash, thinking it was the last thing he wanted her to notice straightaway; at the same moment, it was the first time she ever called him by his name – and he felt strangely moved by the way the syllables rolled on her tongue, like meeting an old friend.

"First thing to do," she said from behind a jumble of random folders, "is to classify all this. Most of these are probably useless by now. The real problem is, things are piling up, so the oldest keep deeper and deeper." She emerged, though not where he'd expected her to be.

"Can you take care of it?" he asked anxiously. If she said she wasn't qualified enough, that somebody else could handle it better than she… well, he could still ask her to dinner.

"I suppose so," she replied absently, scowling at a pile of books. "My mother wouldn't have sent me if she hadn't thought I could manage it."

Shinichi was about to say that her mother couldn't have expected such a mess, then remembered that she was a friend of his parents, and shut it. Ran, who was presently going through some kind of bookcase, suddenly held up two fingers, making him back against an unbalanced wall of the labyrinth.

"Two things."

"Yes?"

"First, I'm going to need your help with those – at least, at the beginning. For the financial part, among other things."

"Sure," Shinichi said; the prospect of having to stay _again_ in this (…) room was largely counterbalanced by her presence along with him.

"Second." She dropped the book on the desk and pointed. "You've got a computer."

"I do?" Taken aback, Shinichi looked over. All he could see was a heap of papers and files and forms and things. Somewhere underneath, however, he caught a glimpse of blue-grey – the screen? Ran was beginning to dig it up.

"I'll manage for now," she said, wincing to spot the mouse. "If I need any help…"

"I'll keep near," Shinichi complied. "I'll tell Tamara-san to bring you lunch."

"Hm-mm," she nodded without looking up, her head bent down towards the keys. She seemed to be trying to plug in the computer – after all that time spent under a ton of folders and dust, Shinichi rather doubted it'd work that easily.

He considered her for another short moment, then got out and closed the door. Ran looked up from the recalcitrant machine as he did so, and watched him disappear through the narrowing slit between the pane and the frame.

She wondered how he would feel if she told him they'd already met ten years before.

-

As days went by, Ran became more acquainted with the house's ways, the hours, the staff. The secretary, Tamara-san, appeared to dislike her for some reason; she answered grudgingly to her salutations and wouldn't talk to her if she could avoid it – but the family's intendant rapidly proved out to be of very agreeable help and company.

He was an old who'd apparently known not only Shinichi-san when he was a child but also Yusaku-san when he was a child. He "remembered Eri-san very well, when Shinichi-botchama was barely born, she often came to visit. A very amiable woman, she was, always a sympathetic word and comprehensive smile. And," he added with a grin and a wink that made him look much younger than he actually was, "I do recall a certain little girl with black hair who came with her one afternoon…"

Ran blushed, and looked away with a vague smile.

"Does Shinichi-botchama know?" the old man asked softly.

"No," she said. "It all happened so long ago; and he doesn't remember anything. He does seem a good master – doesn't he?

"A very good one, Ran-san," the intendant replied with an all-knowing look. "He's very strict, but he's always just – when he's angry, he is because of a good reason. He talks to us with politeness and respect – believe me, I know him since he was born, I have been the witness of his first steps, I was even there when he solved his first case – I know him very well."

The office was unrecognisable at the end of the week. There was still a lot of work to do, but at least most of the floor was visible _and_ apt to be walked upon; and one could open the door without breaking something. Ran was working at the computer, on Saturday morning, when Shinichi came in.

He gaped at the room in utter wonder, and was speechless for a moment. Ran smiled at him over the computer's screen.

"Well," he said at last. "You _did_ great work."

"It's not over yet," Ran shrugged. "I managed to clear the place up a little, but there's still much more sorting to be done. Come and looked at this." She showed him the screen, where a good hundred windows were filing up. "I've drawn a plan of the room, with every drawer and case and folder, and everything that'll be in it once it's classified. I'm entering data as it goes. That way, after I'm gone, you'll be able to find everything thanks to the map – at least, if you put things back up in their rightful place."

Shinichi had heard nothing following 'after I'm gone'. He shook himself and articulated, "I need to thank you."

"No, thank _you_. You helped me a lot more than it was due. After all," she looked up at him and her hand let go of the mouse, "_you _aren't paid for this job. You could be going about your own business, instead of helping me out with this mess."

"Well, actually," Shinichi began uncomfortably, "I won't be able to help you much anymore. Very good friends of mine are arriving on Monday, and–"

"–you'll have to attend them, of course," she laughed. "I quite understand. Don't worry. I don't need much help anymore… what I needed were indications about important and useless items. Now I know which is which, it's only a matter of ordering them all." She fumbled a little with the keys, and then, as Shinichi didn't find anything to say, asked politely, "Who are your friends?"

Feeling uncommonly relieved, Shinichi sat on a corner of the desk and answered, "Well, it's that Osakan tantei–"

She looked up from the computer, her brow furrowed. "Hattori Heiji?"

"Do you know him?" Shinichi asked, feeling that rapid beating of the heart he'd learned to associate with jealousy. He unknowingly braced himself against the answer.

"Not personally." Shinichi let out a deep, silent breath. Ran began typing again. "But I know his childhood friend…"

This was so surprising Shinichi forgot about jealousy. "Toyama Kazuha-chan?"

"Hm-mm," her eyes were fixed in the screen. "We were in the same college in Tokyo – although she was from Osaka. We became very good friends. She told me a lot about Hattori-kun and his – er – cluelessness."

Shinichi laughed. "I quite see what you mean. Poor Kazuha-chan. She'll be coming too, you know."

Ran gave him a radiant smile, and his heart broke in the usual dash. "Really? I haven't seen her in months." She brought a lock of hair behind her hair, and he found himself staring at her hand – with every day, he'd learned to discern her smallest gestures as–

"Shinichi-san?" His head shot up as her worried voice startled him from his daze; he'd approached him a little and her concerned face was beautiful. "Are you alright?"

"I – yes. I'm sorry, I was – daydreaming." He excused himself ad made his getaway, leaving her looking puzzled by his sudden exit. He leant against the door as soon as it'd closed and rubbed his face – something – something…

Something was wrong with his feelings…

-

On Monday evening the following week, Kudo Shinichi was standing under the porch of the family house, where he waited for his friends to arrive. Leaning against the wall, his hands in his pockets, he was trying to think clearly.

He'd taken no decision about Mouri Ran. Although everything, from her gestures to her looks, felt uncommonly familiar and strangely appealing, he couldn't permit himself to fall in love at first sight (well, it had been a week already, his Inner Self reminded him, but he pushed it back in his subconscious) simply because she worked so efficiently on his feelings… no, he couldn't fall in love like that (unless he already was, his Inner Self gloried on, and this time he found nothing to say).

He sighed for himself, all alone in the evening's mist, then a great roar made him jump. Some heart-breaking pounding later, Hattori's bike began to outline itself in the fog, an rapidly Hattori's voice itself thundered, "OI! Kudo!"

They retreated in the house's warmth and golden glow, the mist's chill closed outside. Once the first greetings and laughing salutations were exchanged, Shinichi started to tell Kazuha about Ran, and was then interrupted by Ran herself, who was calling for him from the end of the corridor, a heap of folders in her arms, and who, noticing whom she was with, dropped the whole lot of them and ran to hug her bewildered friend.

"_Ran-chan?_ – Humpf!"

Ran let go of a dumbfounded Kazuha, turned tranquilly to Heiji, and extended a hand with an amiable, "Hattori-kun? Kazuha-chan told me a lot about you."

No less astounded, Heiji shook her hand mechanically, and Shinichi thought it wise to cut in the bewilderment.

"Ran-san is here for professional reasons, Kazuha-chan. She's – er – attempting to clear the mess of my family business. Our parents were friends," he added, since Kazuha still looked puzzled. He grinned a little at Ran and added, "She's supposed to be working, so please don't distract her too much."

"Professional reasons, uh?" Heiji snickered after the two girls had lost themselves in endless chatter.

"Oh, please, Hattori," Shinichi said wearily, "don't start this up."

-

"So," Kazuha wrapped her arms around her drawn-up knees and grinned, "tell me the truth."

Ran stopped soothing down her futon and looked up with a smaller smile. "The truth?" she repeated innocently.

"The _truth!_" Kazuha exclaimed, and her last word echoed loudly in the half-lit bedroom. Outside, a nightbird cried indignantly and flew off – they heard the flutter of its wings as it left its branch. Ran mentioned her friend to slow down.

"What do you want to know?" Ran whispered. "My mother was friends with the Kudo family. When she heard they needed help, she sent me. I mean, help was _necessary_. If you'd only seen that office before I took care of it–"

"Don't misdirect me, Ran!" Kazuha warned, waving a threat-like finger. "I'm talking about Kudo-kun and you know it very well!"

Ran's smile grew, if possible, yet more innocent. "Shinichi-san–?"

"Don't 'Shinichi-san' me! I saw the very way you looked at him this evening – you are in love with Kudo Shinichi!" she accused triumphantly.

"Oh, yes, you sure do know a lot about love looks, don't you?" Ran mocked with her 'I'm The Great Mean Wolf Hidden Under The Red Riding Hood' look. Kazuha immediately blushed, tightened her grip around her knees, and glowered.

"You're stalling," she stated.

"All right," Ran laughed, "I'll tell you." She tucked herself under her covers, propping her elbows on her pillow and her chin on his hands. "I came here once when I was ten. My mother was coming to visit and she'd brought me along… I remember getting rather bored fro the first part, but then Shinichi-san (well, he was 'Shin-san' at the time) came up, and we had rather fun. We kept together all afternoon – I didn't want to go away, and he wanted me to stay for the night–"

Kazuha chuckled.

"We were just ten!" Ran exclaimed, her cheeks crimson. "Well, anyway," she went on with a cough, "before I left, he made me promise I'd come back. But–" her eyes saddened a little, "–my parents divorced then, and at first I – I was too wretched to think about having fun. Then… when it got better… well, I had grown a bit too old to ask my kaa-chan 'mom, take me there so that I can play again with Shin-chan!' Nah."

She rolled on back and sighed at the dark ceiling. Kazuha wrapped the covers of the other futon around her and crossed her arms beneath her cheek. "And? what happened next?"

"Well, I had more or less forgotten all about it – but when my mom asked me if I thought I could handle – alone – the whole management of a momentum like the Kudo Mansion, it all came back to me – that afternoon back to ten years ago, my promise, Shinichi-san…" She sighed again, yet more ruefully. "It _is_ strange, you know, because I half expected him still to be that little boy I had fun with. I was nearly taken aback when he came in and he was twenty."

"But Kudo keeps appearing in the papers," Kazuha protested, "because he's becoming so popular as a tantei. That's how Heiji met him, you know – well, at first he wanted to check which of them was the smartest, but that's just too Heiji-like…"

She pouted with her famous Half-Moon Eyes expression, but Ran grinned; Kazuha, she knew, was very much in love with her childhood friend.

"He's still clueless, then?" she asked softly.

Kazuha shrugged. "Difficult to say. Sometimes he's just as blank as ever and sometimes he takes my hand and is so much more – tender than before. See, it's like we're dating but we never told each other anything about feelings, love, stuff…" she sighed as well. It was a sighing evening. "I wonder how his mind works. I'm not even sure he knows what 'girlfriend' means. He'd probably get out his katana, thinking it's some kind of bug-eyed alien, if someone dared tell him about it." She rubbed her forehead against her knees. Ran reached for her hand and squeezed it.

"Don't worry. He'll understand one day."

"Maybe…" Kazuha smiled at her. "And maybe Kudo-kun will remember about your first meeting if you give him clues."

"Oh, come on." Ran withdrew her hand under the warmth of her covers. "I'm not going to do _that."_

"He's really popular, you know," Kazuha frowned and bent double to get inside her futon at last. "He's got loads of fangirls."

"I know," Ran mouthed mournfully. The pink letters kept arriving regularly, in packs of six or eight a day. At first she would shove them aside for Shinichi-san to inspect them, until he'd told her she could throw them in the bin straightaway, once she'd checked they were only fan letters. They appeared to exasperate him, so she had no scruple in following his orders. "You know, I've barely known him for a week."

"Most of those girls would kill to be as close to him as you are, if only for a day," Kazuha observed, truthfully. "And you're still here for a month at least, aren't you?"

"Yeah," Ran said, unconvinced. She turned on her side and tucked her arms under her arms, gazing thoughtfully at her friend. "I don't know… I guess I'm just happy I could keep my promise from ten years ago, even if he remembers nothing about it."

Kazuha answered nothing. It'd have been difficult not to seem unbelieving when the dreamy look on Ran's face showed enough of her life-long memories from that past afternoon of May.

-

**Aaand… that's the end!**

**At least, for now… it's a multishot, yes. I don't know how many of them there'll be. Three, probably. I know, the title's meaning keeps in the dark – so far, it's an ordinary AU… – but you'll understand when you'll read the sequel. It's fun anyway to deal with Ran and Shinichi in a completely different context – since it's my first AU ever…**


	3. ACLM: thirty minutes after twilight

**Author's note: Updating updating updating updating updating (well, you got the idea).**

**So here's the second part – there'll be three, I guess. Thanks to the reviewers. I hope you'll enjoy this chapter as well!**

**I still don't own anything (sniff), if not the other version of Ran and Shinichi presented here. As for the title, you still won't understand it until next time! (laughs maniacally, though there's really no reason why.)**

**-**

Alternative choices of love and mind (part two)

Thirty minutes after twilight

-

"I know her," Shinichi said decisively. Heiji kept silent. Half sitting on the office's desk, he frowned at his friend. Outside, Ran and Kazuha stood at the base of the great sakura tree, chatting agreeably the way girls know how to, and Kudo, at last tearing his eyes from the window, repeated,

"I know her. I'm sure I do."

"Maybe you just met her when you were a kid," Heiji suggested reasonably.

"Maybe," he admitted. "But – there's… If I had met her shortly enough not to remember her, I wouldn't feel that – way – so familiar… it's like – let me _explain_, Hattori – like I've known her all my life and I never was aware of it. Like she was always by my side but I never looked the right way."

Heiji joined him at the window, his hands dug in his pockets. "I'm sure I know that feeling," he murmured, focusing his sight on Kazuha. The sakura tree was blossoming all over the yard; pink, light, leaf-shaped cherry petals floating in the breeze, swirling around her red-clothed figure. He felt a tiny pinch of pride at the thought that she dressed for him and him only, in memory of that long-past day in temple Sannou. Did she really think he hadn't understood…?

"Referring to Kazuha-chan now, aren't you, Hattori?" Kudo's cocky grin spread from ear to ear. Heiji merely glowered, when only a few months before he would have stammered, blushed, and begun to yell.

"Maybe I am," he eluded calmly, and then wiped away Shinichi's ever-satisfied smirk with a straightforward, "Do you think you love her?"

Shinichi looked aghast. "Hattori!" he laughed. "I've known her for two weeks!"

"And you just told me you felt like you've known her all your life," Heiji remarked matter-of-factly. "Didn't you say there was an extreme familiarity in her posture, her looks, everything, when you met her first?" He paused to think. "I don't suppose you remember a time when you could have met her."

"No," Kudo said more seriously. "I have no idea."

He gazed thoughtfully at the two chattering girls. Ran's long, dark hair tumbled on her right shoulder like a waterfall, and her head was tilted backwards as she burst out laughing, so that he could see her grand, expressive blue eyes shining with glimmering reflections of the sunlight. The pinkness of the tree's branches, which bent, blossom-heavy, over their two heads, accentuated the bloom of her animated cheeks; she was the most beautiful creature he'd ever behe–

"Did she clean up this office?" Heiji enquired, breaking his thoughts, probably for the best, since he was drowning himself in reveries. "Last time I came here the place was crammed with–"

"Yes, she did clean it up," Shinichi answered absently. Ran was looking at the sakura tree above her and pointing something at Kazuha, something that held high in the sky. Probably a bird.

"God, she did great work," Hattori mumbled, tapping his fingers against the wooden desk. "I wonder she's so efficient, seeing what kind of father she's got."

"Her father?" With a jerk, Shinichi regained his attention upon his friend. The only thing he knew about Mouri Kogoro was his lame reputation as a detective. "You know him? What's he like?"

"Yeah, I met him over a few cases," Heiji said uninterestedly. "He's just the kind of guy because of whom we always fail to find the murderer. He has no interest in life but in drinking, smoking and horses races… he's the shame of the profession. Problem is, he's just as much corpse-cursed as we are… But he keeps suggesting out of sense resolutions and being a nuisance to what's-his-name-keibu…"

"Megure-keibu," Shinichi supplied automatically.

"Yeah, him… seems that he used to be a policeman under his orders in his youth, but he quit after his divorce. Not really the kind of guy you'd like to keep by all the time. I can understand why Mouri-chan," a rapid nod toward the window, "preferred staying with her mother and getting into long, long studies… that way," he grinned at his friend, "when she's a magistrate at last, she'll be married."

"Hattori!"

"Oi, this wasn't particular! It was only a general assert– Oh, I'm just fooling, Kudo. Still, can you imagine her getting married – I mean, to somebody else?"

The picture sprang out in Shinichi's mind: Ran-san, her dark hair falling rapidly in the back of a long, white, silky dress, blue eyes shining with mirth, red lips twitching into a delighted smile – and beside her, in white as well, an unknown man, one of those playboys filling up the streets, who looked down at her with his arrogant face distorted by the pride of property.

The image displeased more than he liked.

Much, much more than he liked.

-

"Ran-san, I think this stack's not exactly sorted out… Ran-san?" He turned, laying down the files he'd been flicking through. Ran was standing at the window, forgetting about the computer she had been working on a minute ago. He could barely see her profile, but she was smiling, for no reason he could see.

"Ran-san?"

She turned the smile at him. "Shinichi-san, I think you should come and see that."

He joined her at the window, and immediately understood why she had been smiling. An arch smirk tugged at his lips too, but probably not backed with the same good intentions that Ran was undoubtedly feeling – himself could only see in the situation a new way of teasing to annoy Hattori…

That is, when he'd have him disentangled from Kazuha's arms.

It was obviously their first kiss. There was no mistaking the heavy blush that spread deeper and deeper on both their cheeks as they pulled further in the kiss. And the atmosphere around them was so incredibly romantic it almost seemed made up – I mean, the sakura blossoms floating and swirling all around them in the wind shaded the whole yard in pink, and didn't suit them at all. Hattori and Kazuha-chan were born for the only purpose of getting so much used to arguing with each other that they would end up getting married so that they could go on quarrelling without anyone getting in the way. NOT for being the heroes of a romantic comedy.

"That's so wonderful," Ran enthused beside him. Obviously she was animated with better sentiments towards the two new-born lovers than he was. "Kazuha-chan was beginning to think it was hopeless. But Hattori-kun seems to have understood all by himself, so that I won't have to make him by force."

Well, no, maybe not.

"Hattori's a kendoka," Shinichi said prudently. "Would you have been able to put up with him?"

"I suppose so," she said absently, still peering with delight at the entangled couple. "I won the national karate tournament. Wouldn't that be enough?"

She said and asked this with so much innocence Shinichi gritted his teeth very hard to prevent his jaw from digging its way through the floor. "I suppose it would," he said cautiously. The karateka was a facet of Ran-san's he hadn't yet met with.

"Well, anyway, I'm glad," she said, suddenly remembering her job. She turned back to the computer and added, swirling the rotating chair round so that she could sit on it, "It's great that Kazuha-chan's love for Hattori-kun finally met a reaction."

Shinichi wondered, first, if that was meant for him, and second, what _her_ lips would taste like – and mentally swatted his own forehead for that. It was enough dreaming of her at night, of the way her arms would entangle around his neck and her face would glow with the passionate kiss he'd bend to deliver–

But then she turned to look at him and smiled with so much innocence he cursed himself for thinking that way. Physical attraction didn't allow for everything – but the smile had felt obtrusively familiar, too…

-

The present, thought Kazuha, could not afford any more delight. Not even with a ten-ton truck of Ben & Jerry's chocolate chip sundaes. (Kazuha was very fond of Ben & Jerry's chocolate chip sundaes.)

She and Heiji sat at the base of a great sakura tree – not the great familial sakura tree in the middle of the mansion's yard, but a great sakura tree on the utmost top of a hill, way back in the Kudo estate. Its long, heavy, pale-pink branches were bending over them to the petal-carpeted ground, closing them in a floating, ethereal nest of peacefulness and intimacy.

Kazuha leant mildly on Heiji's shoulders, who was very busy fumbling with her fingers. Yes, their relationship had greatly improved over the last week.

"So," Heiji summed up, "they met when they were kids, and now Mouri-chan doesn't want Kudo to know?"

"More or less," Kazuha murmured; this was the first time they'd had time enough, alone together, to be able to tell him about that. "Things are a tad more complicated – I think she _wants_ him to know but she won't tell him herself – and she won't give him any clues."

"No, but we can, can't we?" Kazuha caught a glimpse of a grin rapidly disappearing on her companion's lips."

"No, Heiji, we can't," she said softly. "They've got to make it up by themselves. We would only get to interfere."

"All right," he mumbled deceptively, then thought of something else. "For now it's just much enough fun to watch Kudo wonder when and where he saw her before."

"He did?" Kazuha exclaimed, and Heiji jumped. "But then that means he begins to remember her! He'll probably remember pieces of their first meeting as long as they keep together, and at length he'll be reminded by some situation or–"

"I don't think so. It's already been three weeks and he merely feels a vague sensation of knowingness faced with her. 'Familiarity,' he says. I guess that if he were to remember anything about her, parts of it would already have come back. So it's either electroshock or nothing at all."

The Grin Was Back. Obviously he was enjoying this idea of forcing his friend into understanding. Kazuha gently shook his shoulder. "I told you, Heiji, we can't do anything about his memories. What we can do, though," she added thoughtfully, "is creating situations of closeness between them. That he doesn't remember they met before doesn't mean they can't be together, can it..."

"Oh, yeah," Heiji said in her hair, "like Mouri-chan did with the two of us–?"

"Wha–?" Kazuha flushed heavily. "What do you mean, Heiji–"

"Oh yeah, did you really think I hadn't understood?" he asked laughingly. His mouth moved down her jaw, twitching into a rapid kiss. He held her chin with one hand and pulled her forward with the other, his arm sliding around her shoulders.

"Kindly try and use your brain, 'Zuha: your boyfriend's a detective, remember?" he asked.

"Yes, but–"

"Sincerely, what did you expect me to think, when Mouri-chan came over and told me, 'Oh, Hattori-kun, Kazuha-chan wanted to talk to you… she's under the sakura tree right now, why don't you go and see her,' hm?" Heiji said, kissing her cheek once, twice, three times, each bringing him closer to her lips.

'Ran-chan did such a thing?' Kazuha thought confusedly. "But I thought it was you who–"

But then Heiji took advantage of her open mouth and she thought all of this didn't really matter after all. The kiss made her forget about Shinichi and Ran –about everything, actually, but hooking her arms around his neck ad kissing back.

No, Kazuha thought as Heiji slowly lowered her to the leaf-covered ground, life could afford nothing better… (it was fortunate Heiji's lips tasted a _lot_ like Ben &Jerry's chocolate chip sundaes.)

-

For a watcher from far away, the lane running by the river must have appeared dark-blue and strewn with fireflies. The floating lights that advanced softly along it were reflected, phantom-like, in the black waters rippled with silver. In the midst of the reeds, one could hear crickets chirping, and sometimes the additional floc of some fish in the river, swishing between two water-lilies. The moon was beginning to rise, golden, almost round, enormous, above the utmost hills, and drew only a very faint light onto the valley.

All along the lanes, onto the trees, hung round paper lanterns whose golden, parchment-like glow accompanied the few strollers returning from the O-bon festivities. Shinichi carried one, too, which he had brought back from the village; behind them, he could hear the laughs and music around the stores, and the more muffled talks of people on the lane. Apart from this long path of light, however, which unrolled itself far behind and far forward, the night was very dark and still – only the quickest move of the reed, the faintest fluttering of the trees' leaves, indicated him that some animal had been disturbed by their passing footsteps.

Ran walked beside him, in a red yukata; behind them were Heiji and Kazuha, holding hands and arguing. From time to time they would hear some 'Ahou! – You're the ahou!' thrown that way and that – Shinichi would sigh, faintly exasperated, Ran would chuckle, and they would go on their way. It was a cool summer evening, with only a few stars visible in a yet cloudless sky – the lights must be fading them out – and the lukewarm wind sweeping down the river flapped against Ran's paper fan–

Shinichi _knew_ he let his eyes trail on his silhouette much more than he ought, had he been only attracted by her like he pretended to. He couldn't help himself. She was lovely tonight. Her red yukata outlined her figure perfectly, and the way she'd braided and brought up her hair was an ideal match to her shining blue eyes. A dreamy look had softened her features and her parted lips were absentmindedly humming a tune that'd been played back at the fête.

They started down a flight of steps, carved in the roc; Ran's balance was fragile on her getas and more than once he had to catch her hand and help her stabilize. Each time he let her go, owning himself a smile from her and a snicker from the two behind, and each time longing immediately for the touch of those slender fingers trembling against his.

"I'm so sorry," she apologised once they'd reached the end of the stairs. "I'm not very comfortable on getas... let alone high heels…"

"It's okay," he reassured her. "I wasn't going to–"

"I said, 'AHOU!' you ahou!"

"Who's the ahou? _Who's the ahou?"_

"You are!"

Shinichi sighed deeply. "Let's go, or these two will tear each other to pieces." The lantern rocked when he flung it over his shoulder and went on. Ran hid a smile and followed him.

"I truly it's great," she said in a low voice, muffled by the 'ahou!'s ringing out behind them. "When I met Kazuha-chan in college, she used to think it completely hopeless. But now," she gave a sideways look at the Osakan ever-arguing couple, "it seems that they're on the right track at last."

"I don't know," Shinichi said seriously, going for digging his hands in his pockets before remembering he was in yukata. "I think they've always been on the right track – they've only made a few detours–"

"AHOU!" thundered Heiji, causing some walkers in front of them to jump with surprise.

"I _think_," Shinichi said, and Ran laughed. In the night's stillness it ran swiftly and clearly, then it was echoed by another two as the other strollers passed them and wished them good evening.

"I'm glad," Ran repeated lightly, and went on humming. Shinichi looked at her, at her radiant face the rocking glow of the lantern was lighting from sideways, outlining each of her features with a thin dark line, and he wondered if, next year, he'd be able to watch this sight again…

"It's working, I tell you!" Kazuha enthused, clutching Heiji's arm. She gazed delightedly at their two companions, who seemed to be enjoying being with each other very much. "It was a great idea to bring them to the fête…"

"Yes, I do have good ideas from time to time," Heiji remarked.

-

The estate, Shinichi thought grimly, sounded strangely empty and silent now that the past, repetitive ahous of his two friends had stopped echoing from wall to wall and door to door. The staff, swift and silent as ever, passed him by in the corridors with a curt and formal nod of the head, and strolled away to their occupations without much more noise than a mouse.

It was now far-off into July, and Ran-san had worked and lived there fro about a month and a half, with great results. The office was now clear but for two or three last stacks, and her ordering them on computer would allow him to deal with the family business with much more speed and easiness than before. Those were happy perspectives; it meant no more endless morning spent in the office trying to handle finances and stuff – but it also meant parting with Ran… and that, he he'd come to understand, would be rather difficult.

The feelings and surges she provoked in him were now familiar and no more as painful as they used to be. Still, he looked out with apprehension at the time the office and affairs would all be clean and dealt with, and she would go. He was accustomed to her living near him, to her sharing with him the small events that regulated the Kudo estate. Heiji and Kazuha's departure had at least brought them together more often; freed from his obligations toward is friends, he was able to help her work – even though he knew it meant finishing the job sooner than if she'd handled it alone.

Still, when she was gone, he would be able to meet her again. Their parents were friends, after all, and he could need her help again. It was even curious they'd never met before, since they were the same age…

The office, he remarked as he opened the door, had undergone many changes. It was now wide and luminous, well ordered in cases and folders; the floor, at last, was visible. Ran smiled up at him over the empty desk, upon which the golden sunlight of this late afternoon streamed in endless reflections. Only a few heaps of papers still remained to be dealt with, and – his heart squeezed a little as he thought this – her job here would be over.

"Shinichi-san," she called from the other side of the room. "I think I'm done with the computer program. If you wish to come and check it out…"

Endeavouring to hide his worries, he joined her by the desk. But – Ran's chair rolled away and slipped, as she tried to move and make him some place by her side – she fell backwards and he slipped too, leaning in to reach out for her, and – CRASH! would be the best word to express what happened next.

When their sights began to get less blurred, and their senses in general to get less confused, they remarked they lay in a jumble of crumpled papers – one of the last remaining piles had given way and scattered all around, cushioning their fall. Shinichi was on top, his hands flat on the ground on each side of her head, and their lips were only millimetres away.

Some positions are waaay too close for sanity.

It was a long, long kiss. They had held it back for six weeks, fighting against their instincts and urges that had compelled them from the beginning to do what they did now – this could be the start, their first meeting, their first move towards each other. Simple want gave way to pure need, rational thinking to raw emotion – Shinichi felt her arms slide around his neck, pulling him closer, and he deepened the kiss shyly at first, then harder. He'd wished for this for too long, had had too many dreams of her that had awaked him in the middle of the night…

Her lips were soft and warm – they kissed him back in kind. She tasted wonderful. He turned his fingers in her hair, marvelling in the tenderness of her mouth, wondering at the craving that dwelt inside of him. If anything mattered in the world right now, it was her and her only, the smell of her hair and the curves of her lips, and the light, brushing touches of her fingertips against his nape. And stopping seemed quite out of the question…

How long exactly they lay kissing, in the midst of scattered files and forms, they had no idea. But the thin, glittering rays of light sailing through the office over to the desk slowly changed from shining gold to red copper, and they must have broken contact once or twice in a struggle for breath, but they didn't really remember it.

At last Shinichi longingly separated his lips from Ran's, and as he opened his eyes he saw her own flutter wide, her stare immediately locking with his. For another long, ever-lasting moment, they kept in that same position, a breath away, unable to move. Then Ran's lips moved again, and Shinichi read on them rather than heard the whisper – the strangled sigh that escaped them–

"Shinichi-san…"

It was probably the politeness of the epithet more than her fragile voice at shook them both out of their dreamful torpor. A heavy flush heated both their cheeks and both of them hastily apologized for everything while they scrambled to their feet. Their hands fell by their sides, now useless–

"I'm so sorry–"

"No, I am, I slipped–"

"It's my fault, I fell on you, I–"

They stopped, confused. Shinichi's eyes wandered unwittingly on her lips, red and moist, still swollen from the kiss, before jerking away. He was already longing for their taste, their shape and softness – he would NOT finish that thought. And – no, that one either.

"I–" she began, then paused, obviously in total oblivion of what she was going to say next. The first thing that came up was, "I'll finish this off for tomorrow. Don't worry about it. Just – leave it to me tonight." He bent towards the tottered pile, she nearly shrieked, "I'll take care of that too. Just, please,–"

"–leave," Shinichi completed, and she nodded with her throat stuck. He walked to the door without anything else than a polite nod, but stopped after he'd opened it and turned back. "I–"

His eyes met hers, and he bit back the words entangling in his mouth. "Good night."

Ran dropped herself on the chair as soon as the door had closed, out of breath. His presence had troubled her more than anything, but his absence terrified her – but no sound would come out from her throat and call him back. Her limp body slumped in the armchair as, panic-stricken, she tried to regain her breath and held her hands tight together to keep them from shaking.

-

The moon rose, that night, golden and almost full again, as enormous as it had been on that O-bon evening three weeks before. Ran and Shinichi watched it from their respective chambers, as it heaved its massive shape over the mansion's roof, its silver light glimmering on the tiles. It tangled itself in the branches of the sakura tree, pale pink against the dark-blue sky, and the night wind swept the cherry blossoms away like a translucent, ethereal veil in the milky moonshine.

The sight was a Japanese wonder, but neither Shinichi nor Ran were inclined in crying out loud, nor felt any tendency in exaggerated poetry. Something had shattered inside them that day.

This last month and a half, they had pushed their instincts and urges away, they had contributed to build a relationship on civility and respect, solid and firm, apt to be relied on; but then it had all crumbled in a forgetful moment of foolishness – and they would never be able to get it back. The morning would bring no comfort, but instead new reasons to be confused, stammered words, watering glances, wounds afresh. The pending friendship they might have reached, had they been more prudent, had been trampled on carelessly, shattered to shreds, without any hope to be regained one day.

It was a dreamless evening. They both sat at their round windows, peering unseeingly into the yard at the ever-swaying sakura tree, and didn't stir, didn't move, although their bodies were badly aching for rest; but they wouldn't lie down, wouldn't let sleep and its fantasies reach their troubled minds. Outside, the branches were rustling, the moon was shining and the crickets and nightingales were out for their lies, chirping and trilling, but they didn't see nor hear any of them.

On Shinichi's side, thinking was still an option. Not that it was any good. He couldn't help but remember Ran all along the six weeks they'd spent together, and ponder on what he could have done, said, tried. That was the problem with rational thinking: it always reminded you you were in trouble by making your worries yet more acute. Though he attempted to distract his thoughts from the gloom they were leading him straight into by forcing his mind on the moonshine, it only recalled to him that O-bon festival and the way she had looked talked, smiled under the same golden glow.

On Ran's side, thinking was no more an option. Not that it was any better. If her mind was obscured, her senses still remembered Shinichi's touch, and scent, and taste, as vivid as it had been that afternoon. It seemed to her that her skin kept tingling under his fingertips, that the shape of his lips still curved against hers, and the kiss deepened, his fingers burying in her hair… until she shook herself awake, refusing to droll away in painful reveries. Even if she had been able to try and persuade herself that it had been nothing more than a dream, its lingering memory was almost more painstakingly real than it had actually been.

It was well over midnight when they at last dozed off in the relentless slumber they dreaded, fearing that it should only bring more unfilled, unaccomplished, remorseful dreams that the morning's acuteness wouldn't even heal.

-

**(grinning) I wonder whether you could guess about the third and last part. The way it happens. It was actually the idea that started it all – but the first part, which turned out into two, happened to be longer than I thought. Now, I have really no idea when I'll update, since the last part is much longer than the two first (actually, I could break it into two shots, but it's all part of the same pattern and I think it would look weird if I just parted it in two). Anyway, it'll take at least a week. Just remember that the more reviews I get, the more I'll be compelled to update **

**Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it! (little Japanese bow)**


	4. ACLM: A Minute Before Dawn

**Author's note: I know, I know, I'm rather late. I mean, I'm **_**really**_** late. Please don't kill me. Here's (finally) the last part of my weird (weirdness at last shows up, though not in the crack sense) Shin/Ran AU. This story isn't meant to be realistic. And if you don't understand everything at first, don't worry, the characters don't either…**

**I Do Not Own. If I did my name would be Gosho Aoyama. Which sounds pretty much like Japanese. Which I'm not. Which I would love to be, if I could own Detective Conan… sorry, got sidetracked.**

**Warning: there's fluff in there. And angst. And romance. And death… and happy endings. (Plural. Yes.)**

**-**

**Alternative Choices of Love and Mind: One Minute Before Dawn**

**-**

_It was raining._

That was the first, and for a moment the only thing Ran knew. She could hear rain's rattling noise as it hit the ground, yet everything around was a grey bluishness. She didn't feel cold though, and couldn't think herself wet. She looked vaguely around, but there was nothing there except the same endless blur.

She was only beginning to wonder what exactly she was doing there when a voice, unmistakable since she had just spent six weeks hearing it daily, rang out clear and loud–

"_OI! Ran! Hurry up, we're late!"_

–and the mist sprang into disappearance, as though the clouds she had been in had suddenly cleared away–

Only they hadn't. They were looming over the buildings, grey and heavy and anvil-like, pouring out rain on the sidewalk. The young man who'd just shouted was swirling round, holding a schoolbag over his head, and bellowing something else above the thunder, but Ran didn't listen.

"Shinichi-san," she murmured.

_But it wasn't. This Shinichi was far younger – seventeen? eighteen? – and was wearing a black high school uniform. And they were in Tokyo here_ – she recognized the avenue – but Shinichi-san had never gone to school in Tokyo…

"_RAN!"_

"_I'm coming!" an exasperated voice replied behind her, _and at the mere tone of this ever-familiar voice she could imagine the lips pouting over the words in a well-known grimace_. "Don't know if you noticed, Shinichi, but it's _raining_ right now!"_

Ran slowly turned around – and then she understood she was dreaming. There was no other way she could see her seventeen-years-old self in a Tokyo street along with Shinichi-san – with whom she appeared to be _very _familiar, as if long-known friends… she wondered why it didn't surprise her that much – but what? that she should be aware she was dreaming or that she should dream such things?

_He clutched her hand and shouted something, but a clap of thunder drowned his words out. They began running again, on the slipping sidewalk – _and Ran followed them on, though she didn't really remember moving. _They seemed to be arguing over whose fault it was they were late; and they acted as though this kind of thing was average relationship. _It reminded her a little of the way she used to quarrel with Sonoko, in more… intimate.

Now she knew she was dreaming, she was taking in the peculiarities inherent to that state – the mild drowsiness and the whole concept of time having no grip here, slowing down or speeding up arbitrarily, without any sense of logical sequence or any respect for the internal laws of space-time continuum. Another evidence asserting the truth of her being dreaming – she was being about as grammatically imaginative as Yusaku Kudo-san.

"_Careful–"_

_They dashed through a crossroad at Mach-3 speed, missed being hit by a hair, and landed on the sidewalk, panting. "Too late," Shinichi sighed, glancing at his watch and pushing wet bangs from his face. "Well, we've done worse than skipping school… hey, Ran? are you alright?"_

_The younger Ran sat on the sidewalk beside her bag and karate pack, hands pressed around her right foot._

"_My ankle," she breathed. "It twisted when I tripped…" She grimaced and tried to pull out her shoe despite the rain._

"_Don't," Shinichi prevented her. "You'll make it worse. Can you stand up?"_

"_I don't know…" She grabbed the hand he'd extended to her and got to her feet, wincing immediately and holding on to him not to fall back off. "Ouch…"_

"_Yeah, well, you can't walk like that. C'mon, I'll bring you home." And, saying so, he encircled her waist and legs, and hoisted her up against his chest, bridal style. Ran gave a little squeak._

"_Shinichi!" She gripped at his dripping shoulders. "Don't – I can walk–"_

"_You _can't_, Ran. If you walk home like that you'll destroy your ankle–" he mumbled, "and if Occhan _must_ tell me off today I'd rather have it for carrying you home than for letting you die off on the sidewalk. Hold on. I don't want you to slip back and break your other leg."_

Ran watched her seventeen-years-old other self murmur, "Okay," slide her arms around his neck and lean her head on his shoulder, face bent down so that he couldn't see the heavy, meaningful blush that had flushed her cheeks to burning point. She wondered if she had looked that way when Shinichi-san had helped her stand up after the k-kiss…

They had begun striding away, cautiously, when the scene dissolved.

And, in the fraction of second between the mistless and the mistful, Ran caught a glimpse of another person standing some yards away – heard a familiar voice exclaim, "_Ran-san–?" _– but it was gone as soon as it had come.

In the midst of the fog, a bell rang, piercing through the immediately clearing mist. And Ran stood in the middle of a classroom, amongst students standing up and walking from their desks in the joyful din of a day's end.

"_Hey, what's the assignment for–"_

"_So, ice cream it is?"_

"_Oi! where're you going? you said you'd go shopping with me!"_

_Rattling chairs, noisy footsteps, laughing voices – they all walked about, shouted to one another, opened doors and flung bags over their shoulders. It was the usual racket of a high school class by the end of a hard day working. _They avoided walking straight into her, like they would have had to do had she been immaterial, but neither seemed to see her.

Ran spotted them rather quickly, the two of them. They stood by the window – just at the desk she remembered having sat, back in second year – both seventeen, alike to those she'd seen only a few moments before, but Ran wore a knotted scarf instead of a tie, and their uniforms were black, not green. Beside her was – a rapid pang to the heart – Sonoko, looking just like she had in high school, with the same discoloured hair and the same nasty grin, and almost back to life.

Ran slid between the desks towards them, but none of them – not even herself – spared her so much as a look. She sat on a chair and watched them, wondering what she would feel if she extended a hand and touched the arm Shinichi was carelessly leaning on the windowframe.

She had given up understanding what exactly was going on. That way the solution would probably come strolling by one time or another and she would avoid a headache. Even so, though, a few dozen conjectures were forming themselves in her mind.

_One of the other students strode past her and tapped on Shinichi's shoulder. "Oi, Kudo! You coming to train?" Ran recognised him as a previous classmate of Sonoko and hers. He played defender in the soccer team._

"_Not today," Shinichi said, and dug his hands in his pockets in a careless move that probably sent all the class' girls down on their knees. "I'm walking Ran home. She's got trouble with the math…"_

_The student – Nakamichi. Yes, that was his name – grinned and slapped him playfully on the back. "I see. Is it really with the math she's got trouble?"_

_Ran – the other Ran, that is – immediately started, but Sonoko outstripped her. "So our married couple's going to make out tonight?"_

_A heavy blush spread over both their faces. "For the hundredth time–" Shinichi began._

"_I know, I know, you mustn't let other people know you're husband and wife – or else Nemuri no Kogoro would probably kill off Kudo-kun," Sonoko added thoughtfully, waving an all-knowing hand. _She had accompanied her mockery with a snicker and Ran felt a sad pinch to the heart – she'd never thought she would hear that sarcastic, extremely irritating voice yet again.

Were they the ghosts or was it her? They didn't exist anywhere else than in her head, and yet it was she who sat here, unseen, unknown by all, as silent and immaterial as a phantom. She saw people she'd lost years before and a man who'd just entered her life for the second time, mixed up together like very old friends and still _she_ was the stranger, distant with the reality of such an unreal scene.

"_We'll miss you, Kudo!" Nakamichi deplored, and then added in a wry whisper, "Enjoy Mouri-chan's company tonight!" Shinichi aimed a kick at his friend's butt and Nakamichi escaped with a roar of laughter._

"_He's right, you know," Sonoko remarked, owning herself two daggering glances. "Since Kogoro-san is off on a case, you'll have the house for yourselves." She winked seductively at Ran. "You should make the best of it…"_

"_Sonoko–" Ran began with evident exasperation, but – _Ran saw it though Sonoko didn't – _Shinichi caught her hand then. He squeezed it gently and mouthed words in silence, "It's okay." Ran paused, sighed, and leant imperceptibly against him._

_Sonoko had seen nothing of it. She was keeping her variations on the theme of, 'Two lovebirds in Detective Mouri's agency,' when the scene faded out again, without any previous notice, and the mist fell down–_

"Ran-san!"

Ran swirled around. "Shinichi-san?" she gaped.

No doubt that it was him, this time – he was twenty all right, and he wore the clothes he'd had on the afternoon before. Only then she noticed she was clothed, too – up to then she didn't remember having really cared.

"Shinichi-san…" Relief invaded her whole. The unknowingness of everything she'd been in 'till then was dreadful. But he was a mark, a location, a proof of her own reality – she could rely on him and he wouldn't vanish in thin air. Consequently, she very nearly threw herself in his arms.

"Did you see those…" the word failed him, and he finally settled for the easiest. "Did you see that?"

"Yes," Ran said nervously. Her previous trance-like calm was giving way to a much more panicked state. "What did you think it was?"

"I have no idea," he answered, frowning. "The whole atmosphere of this feels like a dream, but it was – the colours, the voices, everything looked so extremely real…"

Ran nodded, determined not to tell him about Sonoko and Nakamichi; if he freaked out, then so would she. She was about to ask, "if it's a dream, then who of us's dreaming?" when a scratching noise – like pen on paper – cleared away the mist – but this time Shinichi's hand closed around her wrist and they kept together.

_They were now in a medium-sized room, whose furniture – the tables, chests, shojis, even the wooden bed – were seventeenth-century fitting. There was no light on but that of a worn-out candle on a low, wooden carved desk where a young woman was carefully writing._

_Ran was no more a teenager. She was twenty-three or twenty-four at least, and her hair was elaborately dressed in a fragile construction. She was wearing a red kimono – not a summer yukata but an ancient, embroidered kimono. Her hand was flying above the parchment, tracing elongated, Indian-inked ideograms in old Japanese, rapidly, easily, as if she'd done that all her life._

_Though the whole of it – the place, the elegance of the writing, the furniture, the night outside the window, the incense sticks filling up the room with thin ribbons of white, orchid-perfumed smoke – spoke of wealth and peace, it was obvious something was wrong with her. Her hand trembled several times, and she glanced regularly at the window and at the shojis, as though afraid of might come through both. The tiniest sound made her start, and, once or twice, her head bent down on her parchment – they could then hear chocked sobs and repressed gasps._

_She was having one of those moments when a dark silhouette stepped over the windowsill and inside the bedroom. Her head shot up and for a moment they saw two shining tears frying up on her cheekbones, before she gave an anguished cry and flung herself in his arms. Her carefully mounted up hair swayed precariously; a few locks tumbled down on her shoulders._

"_Shinichi-san…" she sobbed, and by the tone of her strained voice they could understand that she was both extremely relieved and extremely frightened._

_Shinichi wrapped a hand around her frail, shaking waist, steadied himself with the other, and immediately buried his face in her hair – which caused it to break down a little more. They kept that way for a long moment, or maybe very short, there was no way to know the way dreams are. The candle's flame was swaying gently, casting their immense shadows on the beige shojis._

"_You came," Ran murmured at last. "But–" She looked up, and her eyes were wide and anxious, "–if my father finds you here, he'll kill you, Shinichi-san."_

She said that name so exactly the same way Ran herself did, in perhaps more respectful, that it was almost embarrassing.

"_I know," Shinichi said slowly. He'd taken her face between his palms and his eyes devoured avidly every one inch of her features. "I know," she whispered again, and then tilted her head upward so that he could kiss her._

Ran gaped at the sight. Shinichi's fingers dug in her forearm. Both, at the same moment, remembered their own kiss from a few hours ago, which had been as intimate and profound as the one their two other selves were exchanging now; that memory they'd so far succeeded in keeping away.

_Their lips parted slowly, and when Shinichi murmured, "I had to come and see you, no matter what…" Ran burst into tears._

_He appeared to have expected that. He wrapped his arms around her and walked them both to a low couch, where Ran cuddled up against him, crying harder. His voice was stretched as he went on, "After the other night, your fiancé sent men after me. I very nearly escaped them tonight, but they'll be after me in the morning…" He slid two fingers under her chin and tilted her face to him. "I won't be able to stay in town much longer, Ran-san…"_

_Ran nodded, the way crying people do, swallowing painfully. She leant her head back on his shoulder, one hand gripping at his kimono's lining; tears still streamed down her cheeks, and her sobs were turning into hiccups. Shinichi tightened his grab around her and closed his eyes._

"_Four months ago," he said in her ear, "I asked you to elope with me. You said no."_

"_My father…" she started vehemently._

"_I _know_, Ran-san. I know how much you owe your father, how much you respect him. But–" he paused, no doubt in search for words that would hurt the less possible, "–he wants to marry you to someone whom you hate… A life with me," he added painfully, "would be neither simple nor easy, and we should have to build it all by ourselves. But we would be _together_, we wouldn't have to hide our relationship anymore."_

"_Except from those who would be searching for us," Ran whispered. She had calmed down but she didn't look up at him._

_Shinichi sighed. "I see," he said ruefully._

"_Shinichi-san, please understand!" she exclaimed. "I – I'm scared, it's true, I admit it – I don't want to lose you, but–" She took a deep breath, "–this is not a decision I can take so easily. I cannot chose between my father's will and the man I love so easily. Please leave me some more time…"_

"_I understand," Shinichi said after a moment of silence. His voice was low and measured. He took her face in his hands again. "I understand perfectly…" he let her go, keeling by the couch, "I shall come back tomorrow night to hear you final decision. Whatever it is, I will accept it…" There was a glint of sadness in his eyes as he lifted her hand to his lips. "Good night, my love…"_

_He stood and started to the window. Ran marked the slightest hesitation, then ran after him. "Shinichi-san!" She flung her arms around his chest and sobbed, "please, Shinichi-san, don't leave me…"_

_Astounded, he turned around. "Ran-san, your father, your fiancé, anyone could come…"_

"_Nobody will come in," Ran hiccupped. "My father forbid any visit and himself defended me to ask to see him, fearing that I might try to persuade him using his parental affection… Shinichi-san, all day they decide of my acts and my wills, but the night," she bent her head for she was terribly blushing, "the night is ours and ours only, and they can't take it away…"_

_Shinichi didn't need any further encouragement. His lips crashed on Ran's with all the passion they could muster, his arms encircled her shaking waist and shoulders and his fingers buried in her hair, removing the remaining pins, tangling themselves in the black locks–_

And Shinichi's hand let abruptly go of Ran's wrist, as if burnt by the softness of her skin.

_The candlelight was flickering, on the point of extinction, but none of the two lovers remarked it. The first kiss had turned into two, then three, then four, and the craving want of each other that showed more and more evidently in each of their gestures was growing along – _Ran herself felt Shinichi's lips upon hers, the taste and the shape of them; he'd kissed her that way, too, and his fingers had run through her hair the same way.

The rememory was so vivid, so deeply rooted under her skin that she was immediately scarlet – but she couldn't, wouldn't tear her eyes away from the kissing couple, those two lovers who were and yet weren't them–

_Shinichi lowered her to the couch, his lips brushing on her closed eyelids while his fingers fumbled with the large belt of her kimono. Ran hooked her arms around his neck, pulling him in for another kiss, and her fingertips grazed against his nape, softly…_

The candle went out, and with it the rest of the room.

The mist came down, a chilling grey, and Ran and Shinichi found themselves face to face, alone again, without anything to focus their thoughts on but the evergreen memory of this afternoon's kiss. The heart pounding fast, they simply stood in the middle of this foggy nothingness, unable to look at each other, and hoped that the mist would soon clear.

It did, and like the first times it was the sounds that brought out the details of where they actually were. They looked around – this was a downtown park which Ran immediately recognized for one her father and mother had often taken her play when she was little. It was a shiny autumn afternoon, and, given the hour on the tall clock tower on the other side of the square, nearing its end. It was the exact time of the day when the last playing kids have gone home and the first evening strollers have not yet come out.

"_Ran!"_

_A boy of thirteen or so rushed past them, his black hair and blue eyes making him instantly recognisable. He was frowning at the trees as though he searched for something._

"_Ran?" _

_He turned to a bush not far away, drew the branches apart, and went straight in. _Ran and Shinichi followed quite unconsciously. The bush closed down behind them – _it had been carefully arranged to look as extricate and bulky from the outside, though the inside was completely emptied. _It was barely large enough for the two kids to sit in, but they did manage, in their spirit-like condition, to crouch by each other and stare at the two children.

_Ran was in a very wretched state. Her face was flushed, her hair going absolutely wild, and large tears were pouring down her cheeks from her yet bluer blues while her whole body shook violently. Shinichi pulled her against him, and she slumped, hiccupping, against his shoulder; her hand clutched at it so hard it probably hurt, but he didn't protest._

"_Ran…"_

"_Shi-Shinichi," she spluttered, out of control. "Shi-Sh-Shinichi…"_

"_Ran, it's okay, I'm here…"_

"_H-how can you say it's o-kay?" she stammered. "D-don't you understand? He's _gone_, Shinichi, g-gone… I-I will n-never see him again!" Her small fists banged on his yet childish chest and she shouted in his face, "He's gone! Way gone! He'll never come back!"_

"_Yes, he's gone," Shinichi said grimly._

_The abruptness of this appeared to take Ran from aback, as though nothing but the sound of his voice forming over the words could have pushed her into believing them, no matter how often herself repeated them. She opened her mouth, but no sound would come out; her lips quivered and she collapsed back on his shoulder, tear after tear rolling down her cheeks, between her lips, inside her neck._

"_Otou-san…" she sobbed, in his shirt. "Otou-san… Tou-san…"_

_At which point Shinichi tightened his embrace around her and began to run his fingers through her hair as soothingly as he could. Ran was crying yet harder. "They said – they _said_ he'd be able to make it, that it was a g-genuine operation, and there was no need to worry – and now my dad's d-dead… Shinichi…" she hiccupped, "Sh-Shinichi…"_

Ran felt tears coming up to her eyes as well. When she fumbled around she found Shinichi's large, warm hand squeezing hers gently.

_The younger Shinichi seemed to be terrified by the violence of her chocked sobs. "Ran, if there's anything I can do to make you feel better…" he murmured._

_Ran looked up at him through her tears. "P-promise me," she stuttered._

"_Promise you what?" he said in a muffled voice – he looked afraid that if he spoke too loud or too clearly, it would break her into a million pieces of glass._

"_That – you'll never leave me, Shinichi." Somehow, Ran had eased down a bit; though her tears kept flowing on and on, she was almost oblivious to them, and her voice was firmer, less quivering. "You'll stay by my side and help me, please… I don't want to lose anybody else I love." She didn't even blush when saying that; her sorrow was too great for her too be aware of shame in such a situation._

Ran, however, felt Shinichi's hand grip hers harder at this then relax, but when she looked up at him his face was a blank. She wondered if it was the idea of a childish promise that had made him react.

"_I swear, Ran," Shinichi promised very seriously. "I'll always be with you, whatever happens, whenever you need me. I promise, Ran…"_

_Chibi-Ran huddled in his shoulder and nuzzled her nose in his neck – the contact did make him uncomfortable while he added nervously, "Come with me. Your mom's worrying to death, you know. Lots of people – my parents, Sonoko, Hakase, Kuroba, Aoko – are all looking for you… but if I hadn't known where to find you, they might never have. Come on, Ran… you've gotta move on…"_

_Ran nodded, sniffed, and let him help her scramble to her feet. _The move pushed Ran against Shinichi – she had no idea what it would feel like if her mini-double and her were forced into contact and she didn't want to know. She watched them crawl out of the bush and wasn't even surprised when the bush itself faded out with the branches falling back in a flutter of leaves. The mist came down, and there was nothing left but the strong, warm pressure of Shinichi's hand around hers.

They looked at each other shyly. The scene had left a bitter taste in their mouths, probably because it was so different from those they had witnessed before. It was difficult to believe that they'd been so childish as to be confused by a simple kiss, when so much more serious problems were going on.

For the first time, Ran wondered how much longer they would keep on that way, jumping from – what? – dream to dream, alternative universe to alternative universe, watching their alternative themselves made alternative choices of alternative loves… Shinichi himself looked engrossed by much the same reflexion. She opened her mouth to let him know of her thoughts–

A gunshot banged as only a gunshot could have done, piercing through their chests and clearing the mist away with its smoke.

Then the silence dropped, freezing, and they looked around.

_This was a large, dark room, something like a warehouse or a garage. Not a light on, and outside the row of squared windows lined up on one wall there was only pitch darkness. Inside, between the piles of boxes and stuff mounting up in packs, shadows of black stretched against shadow of grey, barely disturbed by the wind that swept past them, chilling. _There was so little colour that they at first didn't discern where they stood, and, once they had, couldn't even bother about how old they looked or what clothes they wore.

_Shinichi was very calm and still, though he was obviously in the weakest position. Hands up, he contemplated Ran with a frown and a sad glint in his oh-so-blue eyes – two piercing sapphires in the midst of darkness. Under their sharpness, Ran didn't look quite like herself; she was breathing heavily, and her hands were shaking around the gun she pointed at him._

"_Don't move!" she shrieked, trying to sound threatening._

"_I'm not moving." After the still childish, slightly breaking voice of the thirteen-years-old a few minutes ago, this Shinichi's voice sounded much lower and deeper._

"_Don't try and escape!"_

"_I'm not trying." His calm was surreal, and it seemed to exasperate Ran still more._

"_How can you be so calm!" she asked, her voice was shaking, too. "How can you be so calm when I'm going to kill you?" _Ran gasped, and she felt Shinichi's gaze trail rapidly on her profile. Yet it had been blindingly obvious since the first gunshot had blown away the mist and they'd seen them, standing there.

"_Do it, then," Shinichi said, still more calmly. "What are you waiting for? I'm weaponless, hopeless, helpless – nobody will find us here, no nobody will save me or disarm you. Nobody knows we're here. What are you waiting for? You should have done it hours ago."_

"_Shut up!" Ran shouted. Her hands tightened around the gun. "Don't you tell me what I'm to do!"_

_Shinichi smirked. _It was a real smirk – the kind of one Ran had seen once or twice on her own Shinichi's face, when he was working on a case and he suddenly got to the truth. _One would never believe he was in death danger, given the arrogant quietness_ _stamped on her features as he watched her without an iota of anxiousness._

"_It's not that difficult," he went on. "You've done it before. You're a good shot, Ran."_

"_Who allowed you to talk to me that familiarly!"_

"_I can allow it to myself since you're going to kill me." He lowered his hands, and Ran's quivered harder. Her assurance was melting with his own growing. "You should hurry up and do it. The longer you wait, the less chances you got to it at last."_

_Ran calmed a little. "Knowing you, you've probably got gadgets and you think they're going to save your life again."_

"_Oh, no," he said tranquilly. "This time there are no gadgets. As a matter of fact, I've really got no way to save my skin."_

"_Then what makes you think you're going to make it alive?" she yelled._

_He fell silent._

There was no sound whatsoever, but, on and on, the rapid drumming of Ran's blood in her ears. Her hand was so firmly gripped by Shinichi's she could feel the beating of his heart against her wrist. It was very hot in the warehouse, and they were both in a sweat.

_Shinichi opened his mouth again – his voice kept the same evenness, the same surreal steadiness. "If you truly want to kill me, do it now, Ran. I'm not a patient person." He certainly didn't look impatient. He looked calm, and, if anything, rather at ease. "There's nothing easier than killing a defenceless man. You can shoot here–" his thumb pointed at his heart, "or here…" he touched his forehead, between his eyes. "I'd rather be shot in the head, if I may have the choice. It's quicker and cleaner. You won't have as much blood to wash ou–"_

"_Shut up!"_

_Ran was breathing heavily. "I hate you," she hissed. "I hate you."_

"_I hate you too," Shinichi said softly. Then suddenly he moved so fast Ran was too astonished to react as he caught her wrist, grabbed her neck, and gatecrashed her lips with his. He allowed her no place to move and no way to escape – his grip onto her, onto her lips, was too strong to let her struggle free even if she had wanted to…_

_But as his free arm sneaked around her waist, hers slid around his neck, pressing her body against his, and she kissed back hungrily – her gun fell to the floor with a metallic _clash.

And the scene faded out again…

Ran and Shinichi looked at each other with embarrassment. They were in no position to control the visions, and they all popped up arbitrarily, so they could have no idea of what could come up next – and, if the first of them had been quite soft and not really disturbing, the last three had been much too keen and realistic for their sake. It was very strange, though they couldn't really formulate why, that they should equally wish and dread that those… dreams, or whatever they were, might finally stop.

"Well," Shinichi said, scratching the back of his head in a gesture which she knew indicated how very embarrassed he was, "it's getting weirder and weirder."

"Yeah…" Ran breathed out. She was the one who felt weird. "It doesn't make any sense. Just random scenes, springing from nowhere and painting some kind of situation… where do they come from anyway? Are they just drawn from our imagination or…" She stopped cold at this point and Shinichi dared not break out her reserve.

Another one of those long, ever-embarrassing silences followed on.

"The problem," he finally found with an ill-disguised haste to change over the topic, "is that we've no idea what's going to swoop down on us ne–"

A train thundered and hissed as it rushed past them, drowning his last words in a heavy blow of white smoke.

It dropped off, and they found themselves – sooo unexpectedly – in the middle of a railway station. But before they'd had time to recover from the usual shock of having suddenly switched _again_ from the ever-stalling mist to a completely different place, the train had stopped already, and a hard of travellers invaded the platform, forcing them to press against one another to avoid them all.

"Look who's here," Shinichi murmured in her ear. She turned, and saw them: Hattori, tall and dark, Kazuha-chan, green-eyed and holding his hand, and herself, looking pale and anxious.

"Who are you waiting for?" Shinichi asked; they had gotten so accustomed to the concept in itself they weren't even taken aback by the resemblance.

"You," said Ran, looking the other way, at the very moment a slightly older Shinichi jumped from the train and ran past them without a spare glance at them, which probably meant he didn't see them at all. _Ran dashed forward as soon as she spotted him; and he shouldered off his bag, picked her up in mid-fly, spun her around and caught her lips with his own before her feet had begun to scramble down on the ground._

_They kissed slowly, deeply, longingly, while the throng was revolving around them with half-amused, half-shocked grimaces. _It went on and on, until Ran wondered how the hell they could manage to breathe, and Shinichi himself cocked an intrigued eyebrow.

"_Oi, oi, " Heiji said behind them, in his strongly Osakan-accentuated dialect. "Take a room, you too!"_

_They broke off, drew in a gulp of air, and Ran grinned at their friends. "Hattori-kun!" she protested. "Let me welcome back my fiancé properly, will you?"_

"_Did you two get engaged, too, during Kudo-kun's absence?" Kazuha mocked._

'_Kudo-kun' stroke Ran's hair very tenderly. "Maybe we did," he whispered, and leaned in for another kiss. _And the scene faded out again, colours dissolving into an indistinct blur, sounds drowning in a chilling silence. Ant they found themselves in the mist again.

Shinichi looked around, aghast, and began, "Well, that was qui–"

A door slammed.

"That's–" Ran murmured once the mist had flown away, eyeing with unrestrained wonder the well-known desk lined up against the window, the coffee table surrounded by two low couches, the worn-out carpet and the door to the stairs.

"You know this place?" Shinichi asked. It was weird to hear his voice in here.

"That's – my father's office," she said. "Up there's the stairs to our flat. I lived eighteen years of my life in here."

"Really," Shinichi said, and she blushed at the interest with which he was gazing around the room.

_Footsteps stomped down the stairs and Ran kicked the door open before stalking inside. Shinichi followed her, looking angry as well. "How many times will I have to tell you?" he said in a hoarse voice, as though he'd shouted a lot. "I don't have anything to do with that–"_

"_Don't you think I'm an idiot, Kudo Shinichi!" Ran yelled, beside herself. "I saw her kissing you!"_

"_Exactly!" Shinichi shouted louder than she. "You saw_ her_ kissing_ me_! Do you think I'd asked for it? She's not even a friend!"_

"_So what, you thought it'd be easier to seduce her?"_

"She _tried to seduce me! She took me totally by surprise!"_

"_Oh, don't make me believe that," Ran sneered. "Everybody saw her hover around you with her glittering eyes – even Heiji-kun did, and that's saying a lot. If you think I'm so stupid as to believe you, the great East Detective, had noticed nothing at all–"_

"_All right, all right," Shinichi conceded, "I knew she was interested. But I would never – ever – have expected her to come up and kiss me like–"_

"_How long did you let her kiss you?" Ran hissed. "I suppose you enjoyed yourself a huge lot before I arrived–"_

"_I was stone-struck, Ran."_

"_Well, your mouth certainly wasn't."_

"_Ran!"_

"_I guess it must have been an agreeable change after me. I mean, there's really no point between a sexy, large-breasted secretary like her and such an unattractive girlfriend like me, without even an ounce of sex-appeal…"_

_Shinichi's eyes went so cold she stopped speaking altogether, but she kept glowering at him while he said in a growling tone, "I thought you trusted me, Ran." She started to speak, but he cut hr off immediately, anger barely restrained in his voice. "After everything we've been through together, after the Organisation, after your kidnapping, after _everything_, I thought I had earned the right to be trusted when I tell you I love you. And I _do_ love you, Ran, whatever you may think."_

_He looked downright furious. He started to the door, but changed his mind halfway there and turned back, extricating a small squared box from his pocket._

"_I intended to give you this at the restaurant, with lots of candles and stuff," he said, shoving it in her hands, "but I guess it's as well if I do it now." And he was gone to the door and outside the office before she'd had time to gape at him._

_Ran gazed cautiously at the small box in her hand. It was covered with velvet. And, when she lifted the lid, a tiny, tiny white ring glittered up at her…_

_She clapped it shut as fearfully as if it had been the Pandora Box. "Shinichi…" she breathed out, and then darted to the door. _Ran and Shinichi followed her as _she tore away the corner and down the stairs, toward Shinichi, crashing down in his arms. He…_

The scene faded out again… the mist swooped down on them, clouding everyone of their senses with its greyish darkness. Yet they had neither time to talk, nor even to look at each other – a door closed, somewhere in the shadowy distance, but much, much softer than the previous slamming, and the fog swept away through the opening, leaving them in the middle of yet another room.

_Shinichi let go of the knob and advanced wearily in the living-room, loosening his collar. His eyes caressed the dinner dressed on the kotatsu, trailed on the kitchen door, and finally landed on the couch behind them. A small, tired smile tugged at his lips and he walked rapidly to where Ran was lying, cuddled up under a cover._

_Shinichi knelt by the couch and playfully flicked away a black lock of hair that had gone astray on her nose. "Ran," he murmured. "Ran…"_

"_Hmm," she mumbled, and tucked the blankets under her chin. He kissed the lips thus uncovered._

"_Ran," he repeated, leaning on his elbow. His finger brushed on her cheek, her jaw, her neck. "Tadaima…"_

"_Okaeri nasai," she muttered mechanically, still in mid-sleep. Her eyes fluttered open and focused drowsily on him._

"_Hello, sunshine," he murmured, stroking her hair. "Only it's night, of course… but if I said moonshine, you'd think I'm Kaitou Kid."_

_Ran listened to him with a small smile. She slid one languid arm around his neck and pulled him in for a kiss, so that he was completely bent to the couch, one hand on its side, the other somewhere in her hair, massaging her nape. "Hey," she whispered against his lips. He drew back silently, with a wry kiss on the tip of her nose._

"_What was the case like?" she asked, stretching. She was smiling up at him from her nest of covers, black hair scattered all around on the cushions._

"_Like always," he sighed, resting his cheeks on his palm. "A macabre, sordid affair of murder… Megure-keibu and Takagi-keiji were out of their skins. There were no clues, no mobiles, not even a reasonable suspect… well, of course, there were, but none of them seemed to lead anywhere…"_

"_And who did it in the end?" Ran asked matter-of-factly._

"_His wife. She tried to suicide after we proved her out, but Sato-keiji just knocked her out before she could throw herself over the – er – well, anyway," he cleared his throat and leant his chin on his hands, "What with the imagination these murderers have got, they could write mystery novels far better than my father."_

_Ran caressed his cheek tenderly. "You've had a bad day."_

"_I wouldn't call it the best in my life," he admitted mournfully._

"_You want to eat anything?"_

"_No…" he grinned at her. "I'm satisfied with watching my wife. You are incredibly beautiful tonight, you know, Ran…"_

_She blushed. It was the exact kind of blush that suited her, a slight rosy flush spread over her cheeks, deepening the shining blue of her eyes and casting a delicate shade over her slightly pouting features as she embarrassedly pushed stray bangs from her face. "… thank you."_

In the corner of her eye, Ran saw Shinichi glance rapidly at her. Given the present situation between the them/not them – they were, er, let's say kissing for the moment, ne? – it was a bit embarrassing. Therefore, she blushed, as well. Shinichi looked away with a small smile, and she wasn't sure how to interpret it.

_The other two parted slowly, lips and eyes still lingering after the kiss. They smiled at each other, and Shinichi mouthed, "Leave me a bit of place, will you?"_

_Ran obligingly shifted beneath the sheets, making him room enough to slip between them and close to her. He caressed her cheeks and leaned in for another delicate kiss, lips barely brushing as they opened, almost as fragile as china. The covers slid down his back when her arms hooked around his shoulders, and husband and wife allowed themselves a moment of rest._

The mist broke down, and they found themselves in the middle of nothingness again. The warmth and golden glow of the living-room retrieved to the original, without leaving them only a sparkle of the immense peacefulness they had sensed about them the whole time long.

"That was…" Ran began, but words failed her. Shinichi looked down at her, with that serious face she had seen the afternoon before – a few hours ago! worlds had elapsed in that short lapse of time – when he'd leant in to kiss her. The thought confused her so much she blushed. Again, yes.

"I –" he began.

_It was raining again. Not a strong drizzle this time, but fist-sized raindrops splashing on the sidewalk, streaming down the buildings around the narrow lane _where they stood, untouched, dry in the middle of a deluge. _Everything was bark or dark-grey, especially the sky._

"_Shinichi,"_ somebody sobbed behind them, and when they looked over there was Ran, her damp hair falling, dripping, in front of her face, bent double over a man's inert body. When they approached, slowly, very silently although she couldn't hear them, they saw that a thin trickle of blood was drifting in the rivulets of water that flew between the cobbles.

"_Ran," he murmured, lips moving painfully. Blood was tainting them red in the total greyness. "Ran…"_

"_I'm here, Shinichi," she whispered, forcing a difficult smile. "I'm here… hang on… the ambulance will be here shortly. They'll take you to the hospital… you'll be all right…"_

_He tried to move. "Ran…"_

"_Shh." She laid a quivering finger over his mouth. "Don't speak…" her hand stroke his cheek; it was shaking. "Just lay still and hang on… You've got to hang on, Shinichi. You're badly injured…" her voice shivered with fear._

"_Too badly," he mouthed. "It's too late, Ran… it's too late and you know it…"_

"_No!" Ran shrieked, terrified. "No, it's not that bad, Shinichi, don't worry…"_

"_I'm not worrying," he said. His voice was rougher, firmer. "Or rather, yes, I do… worrying that your beautiful face should look so sad…" his pale lips stretched, through the rain, to a weary, sort-of smile. "I'm not leaving, you know… I'm with you now, and I will always be… Ran…"_

"_No," she shook her head, unchecked tears streaming down her cheeks. The rain drowned them all in its darkish blueness. "No."_

"_It's okay," he whispered. His sight blurred then focused again. "If the last thing on earth I get to see is your face, then it's okay…" He lifted a hand and his fingertips brushed lightly against her features, tracing her jaw, her lips, the lines of her nose, of her cheekbones, of her eyes as if to carve everyone of them in his elapsing memory. they grazed on her bangs, then his hand fell back._

"_Shinichi!" she yelped, but his eyes still were open, and their dark blue was still fixed upon her. "Please don't leave me… I don't want to be left behind again… please don't go again, Shinichi…"_

_Shinichi spat blood, and she gasped with a shock, wide-eyed, lips forming silent words. "No Shinichi…"_

"_Remember?" he asked painfully, each syllable drew a grimace from his mouth. "Last time you thought I was away, I was right by your side… all along…"_

"_This is different!" she cried. "If you d-die now, Shinichi, I – I – won't bear losing you. I won't be able to stand up with it…"_

"_You have to," he murmured; his voice was getting weaker and weaker. "You _are _strong, my karateka…"_

"_Not enough," she sobbed. "Not enough."_

Tears were coming up to Ran's eyes too. She wiped them hastily away, but they just wouldn't stop. Endeavour to check their flow was impossible, although she knew this was only a vision, and it might be nothing more than a painful dream, still there was an immense sorrow and despair growing larger and larger, more and more powerful in her chest, compressing her heart, because Shinichi was leaving, was fading away with the distance, and this thin, deformed voice that was, and yet wasn't his, was the only sound that proved he still was by her side, for a few moments more …

Then a strong, warm hand caught hold of hers and when she looked back he was there, tall and alive, frowning at her years that kept flowing on. "Shinichi…" she gulped.

He looked grim. "Ran, I…"

"… _love you," the same voice murmured for the last time. Their lips met for the last time. Shinichi's hand caressed her cheek for the last time, his eyes touched her face for the last time, and he breathed in for the last time, finally giving in._

"_Shinichi?" Ran's voice was so fragile, as breakable as thin crystal, at the same time full of hope and utter despair, that it pulled her into crying more. "Shinichi, say something…" But his lips were unmoving and his body was limp with the total abandon of death._

Ran's cry fractured into a sob. Shinichi put one arm around her shoulders and she leant against him, rejoicing in his warmth and comforting presence. The rain still left them untouched but it seemed that its cold did reach them, paralyzing their senses.

"_SHINICHI!!" _Ran's yell pierced through them like an ice arrow. They couldn't quite see her clouded figure, due to the rain and the night ad the chill of this deserted alley, but it was distorted and painfully crying, _"Shinichi! Shinichi!! Shinichi…"_

Ran hid her face in Shinichi's shoulder, and as he put both his arms around her she felt a tear drop on her forehead, as well. She allowed herself to get lost in this warm embrace, and the tender soothing of his hands upon her back, onto her hair, the caress of his cheek on the top of her head. A voice – whether it was the other Ran's or her own, she couldn't be quite sure; her lips were moving but she wasn't certain they uttered a sound – was repeatedly sobbing, "Shinichi… Shinichi… Shinichi…"

"I'm here, Ran, don't worry," he murmured in her ear, which probably meant she was the one speaking, unless he was deceived too. "I'm here…" His grip tightened around her, around her waist, burying her in a nest of silence of stillness and quietness.

The rain stopped as abruptly as it had begun. They remained nevertheless entangled in each other's arms, oblivious even to the falling mist, then suddenly, in the midst of the all-muffling fog, echoed the last sound they would've expected to hear – two childish voices forming around a lullaby.

They jerked apart and looked around, astonished. They no more stood in the middle of a lonely street, lost in the night and the rain; it was mid-afternoon, and overhead floated the branches of a sakura tree they both immediately recognized.

"How come–" Ran stammered while Shinichi considered the house with complete bewilderment.

He turned to her. "We're back?" he said confusedly.

They weren't back. The buildings looked several years younger, and the drowsy, dream-like impression that time at last gets the chance to go its own funny way kept permanent. Yet could it be that an alternative universe held another Shinichi as the young master as this same mansion?

"_Shinichi-kun!" a girlish voice called out behind them. "Shin-kun, wait for me!"_

_Mini-Ran appeared before their eyes, with a purple dress and a scowl. _Her older self stared unbelievingly at her. That purple dress–

"_Hurry up, then!" Chibi-Shinichi called back. "Kaa-san will find us if we stay here!"_

"_But there's not place to hide…"_

"_Come with me! _Quick_!"_

Ran could have told their lines with them. In ten years, she had forgotten none of them, and like back then she could feel a mix of excitement and fear growling in her stomach, recalled back to her by the whole past scene unfolding before her eyes. She dared a peep at Shinichi, but he was simply watching the two kids run towards the sakura tree, not a glimpse of recognition sweeping on his features.

"There's a hole in the roots of the tree," he said interestedly. "They'll probably hide in it," and this could have meant he remembered they _had _been hiding in it if the memory, shaped as the two kids they used to be, weren't doing so at the very moment.

"_Shin-chan! Ran-chan!" Yukiko shouted from the shoji they had passed through a few moments and ten years ago. She was exactly the same as Ran remembered – exuberant and talkative, while Eri, beside her, looked serious and calm. "Get out of here!"_

"This should be fun," Shinichi murmured in her ear. She saw his grin as he straightened up.

He was enjoying himself very much, of course. It was probably a lot of fun indeed, when you didn't know all of this wasn't simply a vision, but it had happened before, really happened… Ran felt nothing like laughing. Like crying, rather.

"_Shin-chan!" Yukiko bawled. "Ran-chan's got to home!"_

From where they stood, they could see the two children whispering and chuckling. Ran remembered perfectly how it had felt like: the narrowness of the hiding, Shinichi's sweaty hand clutching hers and his rapidly flowing voice murmuring almost indistinct words.

"_Shin-chan!" Yukiko shouted once more, but Eri stopped her._

"_I figured out where they are."_

She certainly had, Ran thought, watching her ten-years younger mother towards the tree. She had probably heard the whisperings. She glanced shyly at Shinichi but he was still looking blank, unconcerned.

"_Come on, you too," Eri said, bent over the hole, " get out of here. Ran and I are going home."_

"_Aww, but Mo-om!" Ran complained, crawling out of the tree's roots. "Can't we stay just a lil' longer? Pleeease?"_

"_Or," Shinichi suggested hopefully, following her out, "Ran could stay over. Just for tonight. You could come back here and fetch her tomorrow."_

"_Hey, yeah!" Ran enthused. "Let's do that!"_

_The two moms looked at each other and chuckled in a very motherly way. "I'm afraid that's impossible, Shin-chan," a beaming Yukiko told her son. "We're leaving for Hawaii tomorrow, remember? It would be much too complicated – just imagine, if Eri-chan had any kind of trouble on her way here, what would happen to Ran-chan?"_

Ran peered at Shinichi. He was frowning.

"_Just two more minutes?" He'd pleaded ten years before. "Pretty please?"_

"_All right," Yukiko conceded, laughing, and Shinichi grabbed Ran's hand and dragged her around the sakura tree, to where nobody could see them but_ their two other selves, who followed them, completely unseen.

"_Promise me one thing," he said in a whisper. He gazed expectantly at Ran. "We'll be coming back from Hawaii in two weeks. Promise me you'll ask your mother to bring you back, so we can play again…"_

Ran felt tears coming up. I did, she thought, staring at chibi-Shinichi. I did come back. But I was way too late–

"_Promise me you won't forget," he insisted._

–and _you_ had forgotten me.

Shinichi – the twenty-years-old Shinichi – stepped forward, past her and toward the kids. His lips were focused on them and his lips silently mouthed the words his ten-years younger self was repeating, "_promise me…"_

_Ran knotted her littlest finger with his and replied joyfully, "I–"_

"–promise," Ran murmured, and Shinichi swirled around and to her.

"Ran–" his lips were quivering, as to a shocked man. "That–" he looked back at the two chibi-themselves. "Those kids… were us, weren't they?"

Ran nodded, her throat suddenly dry. Tears were prickling at her eyes, but she was afraid of his reaction if she wanted to wipe them away. It was enough to see the shock the remembrance had produced upon him.

"You knew? You remembered?"

Another nod.

"But why didn't you te–"

The scene faded out from all around them and the fog flopped down on them, drowning the decade-long memories in the past where they belonged. Shinichi went on without paying attention. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I was way too late," Ran murmured, staring deep in his blue eyes. "And you had forgotten all about me."

No! I–" he looked wildly around him, maybe in search for the two kids and the sakura tree, but there was only mist there now. "I remembered – things – I felt familiar with you and I couldn't understand why. Neither words nor shapes, but… sensations…" he cupped her face between his hands. "Feelings…"

The fog abruptly cleared away, stunning them both. They gazed around in bewilderment – they had assumed that, now they'd finally been reached the truth, the visions would stop. But the mist was streaming away, shades and shapes rapidly growing more and more distinct, and they both stood in the middle of the living-room Ran had grown up in.

_Ran was sitting at the dinner-dressed kotatsu, but Shinichi was nowhere to be seen. Instead, there was a little boy around seven or eight, with a bowtie and black-framed glasses. He did look like Shinichi. A younger brother, maybe, or a relation…_

"_Conan-kun, you've got rice all around your mouth," Ran complained gently, leaning in with a napkin._

"_Sorry, Ran-neechan – your hayashi rice's so good I couldn't resist eating it as rapidly as I could," the boy chirped happily. His voice was almost too childish to be true._

"_You want some more?"_

"_Yes! – Could we watch a movie tonight, Ran-neechan? Ne, could we?"_

The younger sibling, then. Ran looked around for the older brother. The kitchen door was ajar – maybe he was there, fixing some dessert. She disentangled herself from Shinichi's arms; he was reluctant at letting her go but he put up no resistance. They watched.

Conan-kun was finishing his plate and talking with Ran, laughing mirthfully. He was the splitting image of a little boy around eight, so perfect that it was almost unnatural… especially when he turned his head and looked straight at them.

His blue eyes were acute and piercing behind the thick glasses. He tapped on his neechan's shoulder and pointed them at her; Ran reached for Shinichi's hand, but otherwise they were too astonished to react.

The seventeen-years-old Ran stoop up, and moved so that Conan was hidden from their eyes. Then Shinichi himself came up from behind her when she stepped away – the choir where the kid had sat was now empty. (Another crappy event to add up to the list, but after a night spent in switching from alternative universe to alternative universe they were no longer bothered by downright crapiness.) She looked up at him; he laid a reassuring hand upon her shoulder, then let it fall down her side and grabbed hers.

The two couples stood in front of each other, almost alike, almost in the same position – like some deranged reflection through a deformed looking-glass. Things couldn't get any weirder.

"_The night's coming to an end," the Ran on the Other Side said in a sepulchral voice._

Okay, that was a mistake. Things were weirder by the minute.

"_You're terrifying them, Ran," the Other Shinichi said, and laughed. "Drop the medium act now."_

There had to be another adjective for weirder than weird. Ran and Shinichi looked bemusedly at each other – they didn't feel so. Disorientated, unprepared, definitely no more on the right track, yes. But not terrified.

"_It's true, though," Ran said thoughtfully. "They might wake up anytime soon."_

"_Sure," Shinichi said, "but we can't simply tell them without any explanation beforehand! Did _you_ understand what's happening?" he asked his alter ego._

"I understood we were dreaming," Shinichi said slowly, methodically. "But it's the first time one of those – visions talks to us… 'till now we were phantoms with neither shape nor consistency."

"_We're not visions," Ran said. "They weren't visions either."_

"What were they, then?"

"_Choices."_

"Choices?"

"_Yes. Alternative ourselves, who turned right when we turned left, who were born or raised differently, have other ways of thinking, other relationships with people, other needs, other wounds, other minds, other choices, but who are in the end all linked by the same–"_

"–love," Ran completed. Her other self smiled at her.

"_Yes."_

"Do you mean it's decided by some kind of Fate or something?" Shinichi, trying to keep up, asked.

_Ran shook her head, and Shinichi said, "No. You can still make the choice to back away – your future together is all up to you. Your mutual attraction towards each other isn't calculated, it merely happens. Because you recognize each other from those other worlds you're not even aware of. From a future that had not yet occurred."_

"From a future that had not yet occurred?" Ran repeated, wondering if dreams could be drunk. Then the idea came to her that he probably hadn't a clue about what happened any more than themselves had, and was trying to explain with mere words that impression of recognition and knowingness with one another they had felt from the beginning, and which a one-afternoon meeting dating back to ten years wasn't sufficient explanation of. And maybe it was Fate after all, but they had no way to know whether that was true or not and they weren't going to try and check it out.

"All right," Shinichi was saying as she re-emerged with a 'pop!' "But why did you show us all those… dreams, or whatever they were, so that we could be aware of those other choices alternative ourselves mad?"

"_Show you?" Ran frowned. "We didn't show you anything."_

"You didn't?"

"_Of course not," Shinichi said, cutting in. "You are at the origin of this. You fell asleep with the same feelings of uncertainty and fear as to the morning, and your minds, your… subconscious generated those dreams."_

"But they're real, aren't they?"

"_Yes, of course."_ Of course.

'Give up,' Ran thought. 'It's no use,' and Shinichi effectively did so. Instead, he switched to another problem. "And why are you here? Did you want to tell us anything?"

"_Why, yes, that's the thing," Shinichi began, but then cut off and looked expectantly at Ran._

"_The thing is," she said, "we don't want you to miss your chance. _You_ can live your love freely, _you_ can be together if you choose, and yet you're throwing away that choice simply because you're afraid of whatever repercussions it might involve on your tranquillity and peace of mind._

"And what business is it of yours, anyway?" Ran said, a bit dryly – it was slightly annoying to hear one's fears and flaws not only understood but also openly expressed by someone who was – and yet wasn't – a complete stranger to her life.

"_You at least _can _be together," her alter ego said, and_ Ran was astonished to see she was on the edge of crying. "_You can decide if you want it or not, while we can't stick with each other until the truth's found out and we don't even know if we'll be able to love each other one day–" She then burst into tears and Shinichi put his arms around her, pulling her head in the crook of his shoulder._

"_What Ran's trying to say," he said, soothing hr back, "is that you're lucky enough to live up in a world where nothing but yourselves can threaten your being together. Nobody – neither family nor wars nor traditions nor enemies – can part you, if not yourselves. You don't have to live far away from each other, or to stand privations and ordeals that keep you both apart like many alternative us in alternative worlds, like–" his grip around Ran's shoulders and waist tightened a little, "–we have to bear with."_

Ran opened her mouth to ask what kind of trials _they_ had to stand up with, but the remembrance of the little boy turning out to be Shinichi was too puzzling and she finally asked nothing at all. She then realized something had changed – something to do with the drowsiness she'd felt all along and which seemed to be less acute–

"_They're leaving," Ran noticed anxiously._

"_Yes, well," Shinichi said, "it's all up to them now. We've told them what they need to know, but we can't make the choice for them."_

The mist was indeed falling down, and the room vegan to dissolve. The other entangled couple was fading out too, smiling. For the first time, Ran felt conscious of her body, fast asleep in her room - the dream was streaming away from her pores, and reality tried to claim her possession upon her again–

She struggled back to the drowsiness and asked out loud, "Wait a sec' – I've read somewhere that some dreams happen in barely a minute of human life, just before waking up. Is that what's happening now?"

_Ran's face was almost indistinct by now, and her voice rang out distantly, a note of delight into it– "Of course! Morning dreams may realize themselves, you know?"_

_Colours and shapes had nearly disappeared, but Ran shouted again, "You should hurry and wake up! There's only a minute left before dawn!"_

They were gone.

Shinichi and Ran looked at each other. Curiously, embarrassment was gone now. They were simply faced with two paths, like the one on that O-bon festival, unfolding itself far forward, so that the distance was too great to discern what the future would look like.

"Well," Ran said, "looks like it's time for choices now."

"I say we leave choices to the morning," Shinichi said archly. "There'll be enough worries to be taken care of then."

"Then," Ran said, a small smile stretching her lips, "we should make the best of what little time we have left, since there's only two or three min–"

But then Shinichi kissed her, and it was all alternative loves and universes merging into one, all dreams and visions and mirages entangling into one truthful reality. It was a kiss that weighed years of sakura blossoms, lost promises, files and forms, unexpected meetings, paper lanterns, computer programs, golden moons, occurrences and coincidences – and it was so unlike anything they'd ever experienced that, dream or not, it was much too agreeable for reality to be chosen over it.

"I love you, Ran," Ran murmured against her lips.

Ran smiled and slid her arms around his chest. She could feel her conscience going already, seconds elapsing into minutes, the little time they had left– "I love you, too."

And the scene faded out again…

-

The sky was slowly turning from dark lavender to a very light shade of blue. The sun emerged from within a sea of whiteness in the farthest east corner of the horizon, flooding shining gold onto the town and glittering against the window then onto the bed. The sheets were dazzling white and Ran opened her eyes under that sudden light confusing her eyes.

Shinichi's breath was soft in her ear, and he kept her in a leg knot, his arms wrapped tightly around her waist. She smiled up at him and woke him up with a smart kiss on the tip of his nose.

"Hi," she murmured as he struggled to the surface. His eyes half-opened, swept on her face, and a lazy smile twisted his lips.

"Hey," he managed. "'Slept well?"

"Hm-mm," Ran mumbled, her thumb drawing circles on his shoulder. "I dreamt."

He grinned. "Oh, really? What about?" and eased himself on his elbow, causing her to lean slightly deeper against his chest. His hand crawled under the bedsheets and sneaked around her waist, pressing their bodies tighter together. "What do you remember about it?"

Ran's cheek was brushing against his shoulder in that position. She looked up at him, smiling. "Well, it was…" she mouthed, and then allowed him to steal a kiss from her lips, "it was a very strange dream…"

-

**17 pages. Wow, my longest. Yup, that's the end. I suppose you've found some Rans and Shinichis a bit OC, but they're alternative them, so anyway… yes, the two last are supposed to be the ones of the manga. My first draught was MUCH messier than the final one, I must say. I don't know if I did a better job. You tell me. I'm expecting reviews on that one! (but I hate to say 'I want that number of reviews, or I'm not updating…' makes me feel uncomfortable towards the readers.) Ahh, hope you liked it anyway!**


	5. Winter Quarter

**Author's note: Because, you know, I love angst. And it's been a while since I updated this. And I've been thrown back into the ShinRan relationship by watching DC's second drama movie a few days back. Besides, I wanted to explore a bit further what was likely to happen after Shin-chan comes back – try and get to see other possibilities than she-doesn't-forget-him and so on. Here's my attempt. Whether good or failed, you tell me.**

**Disclaimer: I do not, and have never, and probably never will own anything that looks like DC's rights even five miles away. Nope. So don't add to my despair.**

**That shot was mainly written for Rani-chan, because she so absolutely rocks even when she's answering to a challenge.**

**-**

**Winter quarters (don't ask. I mean it. Don't.)**

**-**

Mid-February has never been anyone's favourite time of the year. All of Christmas' former noisy, lightful festivities and animations just fades away, and nothing is left but unhooking the tree's decorations and getting up early in the morning to the dark, empty streets. Winter, the bleak, cold winter settles in, with all that it implies of icy wind and rainy skies; and even the snow, though it keeps falling and swirling in the night exactly like it did one month ago, holds nothing more of the childish atmosphere of romanticism it used to hold. It covers the streets and the roofs with soft, silent whiteness – covers up every familiar place, covers up every known landmark – and the whole town is numb and senseless.

Almost everything that made winter so enjoyable before Christmas is still there – the ivy on the doors and the snowball parties, early evenings and fire in the hearth – but Christmas is gone until another year round, and all those aforementioned pleasures don't feel quite so light and cheerfully pointless by now.

It had been a rotten Christmas anyway.

And walking in the deserted streets as a solitary stroll, and seeing the snow whirl around her with the wind rushing into her hair, didn't feel a bit the same as when as when she leant over at the window in the evening, and wondered whether Shinichi would be back home for Christmas. It was no longer staying at home by the phone and wrapping presents in the office, each night expecting a call from him, that would either hasten his coming back or put off his return. There was no more wandering through the crowded malls on Saturday afternoons, looking for something red she had not offered him yet, and having to endure Sonoko's caustic comments about the two of them – Sonoko was very careful to hold her tongue now.

Shinichi _had_ come back for Christmas – with ready-made apologies and a story to tell. And that story, paradoxically to everything she had ever imagined his return to be like – coming unexpectedly on her doorstep on autumn afternoon, finding the lights all on at his house one spring evening, even the clichéd scheme of kissing under a bridge one summer morning – was such an anticlimax it had thrown off-balance all the little events that had built up to be so important and so meaningful over the last two years. It was laughable, really, how it was all coming down so easily, so completely.

Laughable. Laughable, right?

The snow crushed softly, irritatingly, under her feet (there wasn't two inches of it really, just enough to leave footprints); she went on, biting her lower lip, hugging herself against the cold embrace of the wind. It was flapping back the folds of her scarf, its fringes was flying in the air and snowflakes were drawing thin, delicate intertwining out of the fabric's tight frame. She had tried not to be angry with him – she had tried to understand. She had tried to pretend that every word he uttered did not appear to her as the most blatant of lies now. She had even tried to forgive. She had _said_ she forgave him – since he had done it all, all the lies and all the disguises, in the sole purpose to protect her – hugged him and said she was glad he was back, safe and sound. He hadn't believed her: not fully. She hadn't either, anyway.

He'd been relieved, though – probably thought she'd beat the crap out of him or something of the sort – and, as he left, had said something about school tomorrow and returning to ol' routine. She'd smiled and nodded, and seeing him go, seeing his back retreat and his grave profile as he turned once more to take a long, parting look at her, she had felt that things suddenly were changing so fast, were rushing around her in such blurs of colour and sound and life – sudden life – that routine was already a thousand miles away, and everything was revolving around her in endless spinning of dizzying speed.

When they met again, she did her best to laugh with him and act as though nothing had changed. But it wasn't that easy. Shinichi had been gone for almost two years, even if he had been there all along, she always realised belatedly, and he had changed very much. The arrogant, careless teenage who'd left her running at Tropical Land had grown into a grave young man, with maturity on his features and a hard glint on his eyes; and the persona he was giving when he was near her was but a ghost of him, another disguise, another pretence he built to spare her from being hurt, by his having changed too much. Lies and lies and lies again.

He had formed around her a cocoon of peace and sleepy ignorance – where there were no sharp angles, where everything was round and polished and everything at its proper place, without alteration, without pain. He meant to protect her from any further harm – and if that harm was coming from _him_, then he had to give way.

So then, slowly, methodically, according to the calm and logical sequence that characterized every one of his actions, their bonds – in all their closeness and intimacy – had reduced to polite, pasted smiles and formal conversation. They were falling apart, and it was as simple as that – their long-lasting friendship was frittered away in one single, cold, short month of January.

And that was what she'd been waiting so long for – yearning for his return, unsuspicious that it would only take him farther away from her than his absence had.

She realised that the lights at Hakase's were all off, and she had been staring at Shinichi's grand, dark house for many minutes. With a sharp jolt, she returned to the reality of her situation – her left hand gripping tightly at her bag's strap and her right hand clutched into a fist in her pocket; the wind rushing in her scarf, flapping it aside with strength, and stray bangs of black hair tickling her cheeks and nose; the all-breaking pounding of her heart in her ribcage. Her lips were half-open – steam was rising softly, like a translucent veil – her eyes staring, unseeingly, at the iron gate before her, and the tall black building, standing out against the darker sky.

As a child, Shinichi's house had excited in her the same sort of fascination as did a labyrinth or a fairy castle – it was so vast and so mysterious, and there were so many rooms there was almost no end to them, since all their hide-and-seek parties and treasures hunts had never been enough to map them all. Years later, as adulthood was hovering closer at an alarmingly fast pace, here was the little girl she used to be, standing in front of the dark, unchanged house and clutching at her bag's strap as though her life depended on it – and she thought of the boy she had fallen in love with, and she wished they could go back to those careless times.

No worries back then; no pain, but the childish disappointments that punctuated their lives; the days elapsed away rapidly, each one similar to the first, as though they would always last. She couldn't even remember when or why it had ended. She couldn't even remember how, undergoing so many changes, it had led to here and now; to standing in the cold and snowy night, and to watching a house she wasn't even likely to enter anymore.

A tear fell before she had time to chase it away; on her cold cheek, it felt like ice.

She took long, deep breaths into the chilly air, her lungs squeezing under the sudden rush of oxygen, and she hugged herself tightly to shock herself back to reality. Her fingers buried hard in her arms. And yet tears fell on – she hadn't cried once since Shinichi had come back – one of them ran down the skin of her cheek and into her mouth; she felt its salty taste between her lips.

Crying sharpened her senses, as it often does, and she felt him approach from the street's left end, heard the snow-crushing pause as his feet stopped a good yard away from her. Even without looking up, even with the tears blurring her sight, she could imagine him perfectly – his hands in his pockets, his jacket, dark-blue, thrown onto his shoulders, perhaps a scarf wrapped loose around his neck. He would be breathing quietly, in and out, and his eyes, darkened by the night, would be fixed gravely on his profile. He stood there, silent, not very far – if she extended her left arm her hand would land flat on his chest – but not very close, either. He could've touched her if he wanted, but he didn't.

Her tears dried out, of course. They always do. She wished she hadn't cried after all – crying always made her look so _vulnerable_, and he was the last person to whom she wished to appear so. Sniffing, she rubbed her nose on the back of her hand, turned her head to the side and said – only her voice came out as the merest trickle – "I c-came to s-see Hakase."

She couldn't prevent her voice from shaking, and felt with increasing vexation the effect that must have on him. If only her body would stop betraying her and holding out neon signs reading, 'Needs protection'!

"I know." His voice was grave already; in the depth of the night, it came low and vibrating in the chilly air. Ran took a sharp breath and blocked it. Yes, of course he knew. Of course it wasn't him she came to see. Everything that mattered in the universe was gathered in this small corner of street, and she hadn't come to see him.

Now that this was clear and settled, the most logical move would have been to turn – not left, though that was the way she had come from, but now Shinichi was standing there and he was tall enough for her nose to crash in her shoulder – turn right, therefore, and return home quietly. The snow would crush under her feet, and that sound, as annoying and irritating as it had been on her way here, would now also be reassuringly familiar. Shinichi wouldn't call her back, he _dared_ not.

Her mind was all set on accomplishing these moves, yet her body was still. Her limbs wouldn't stir, and her nails were still digging in the flesh of her arms. Her lungs were beginning to scream under lack of oxygen – she parted her lips and drew air in a sharp gasp – but even so her muscles were stiff and absolutely refused to move. She was vulnerable all over again, and realising that returning, increasing weakness brought tears to her eyes again, but now she couldn't shake them away.

It was probably the sight of those tears, though, that drew Shinichi out of his silence. His fingers closed around her wrist, and she heard him say softly, "Come on in. Your tears are going to freeze if you stay like that." His hand slid down to hers and dragged her forward – as he entered her field of vision she saw that he was wearing the same jacket she'd imagined to be on his shoulders – and her body followed numb. _Traitor!_ she thought to it.

They were past the gate before she'd heard it clicking open; the central alley rushed by in a blur of dark blue and grey; her feet stumbled up the steps to the front door. Shinichi fumbled a second with his keys – she heard them tinkling in his hand – the door was open then shut, and the entry closed all around her in shades of grey and black.

"Take your time," Shinichi said quickly, and his fingers parting from hers, he walked down the corridor and disappeared past the living room door. He sure left her the possibility to leave, Ran thought, her hand still clamped around her bag's strap. Slowly, methodically, she took off her shoes and laid them neatly by Shinichi's, then hung up her coat and scarf. She felt cold without them as she walked down the dark, empty passage to the living-room door.

Shinichi was kneeling by the fireplace and piling up logs in the hearth. Ran paused on the doorway and watched as the first sparkles flickered in the darkness like butterflies of fire and the first flames rose up, an immediate spot of warm light in the grey, cold room. They sent swift glimmers of red and gold on Shinichi's face, as he kneeled a little longer by the chimney to make sure the fire didn't die down immediately; they traced his features with a line of shade and a line of light, deepening the blueness of his eyes.

Ran's throat was stuck. Without a word, she walked over to the nearest window and stared resolutely, arms folded, into the dark, misty outside. It was snowing less. The ground was covered in white.

In the black reflection, she saw Shinichi stand up and look over at her, hesitating. He wished – he certainly wished – he had not let her in after all. When he approached her, it was with obvious reluctance – she probably reminded him of times he didn't want to remember anyway – and though he at first reached out towards her back, his arm almost immediately fell back. But then she only had to close her eyes and she wouldn't see him anymore.

"… I'm sorry, Ran." The way he said her name hadn't changed yet – the gentle inflexion he gave to it, the automatic familiarity there still was in his voice. It struck deep in Ran's chest, wrapped around her heart like a warm hand, and squeezed. She had missed him saying her name – not deformed through the phone, not falling off to meaninglessness like since he had come back. He had barely whispered it right now, so softly she had to cling on to his voice to hear it; but a sort a relief filled her as she realised that, for a few more moments, they were bound close together.

The fire flickered and crackled in her back. He hadn't turned on any more lights. Reopening her eyes, arms folded, Ran watched in the black reflection on the window's glass, where thin, almost imperceptible lines of light drew dimly the shapes of the room inside. Shinichi had inched closer in silence; if she bent only a little backwards her shoulders would graze against his chest.

It had been so long a time since they had not been in such intimacy together, without any company, without only resentment and apologies as their respective shields, that she wanted this short moment of mutual vulnerability to last as long as possible – when it would all be over, when their would retreat in their fortresses of polite and pasted smiles, they would probably never have another opportunity to be defenceless once again.

"I'm sorry I lied to you. I'm sorry you hurt. I'm sorry I had to… to bear such a disguise. I'm sorry for everything that happened to you."

Ran closed her eyes again. Frankly, she didn't want to hear that. Didn't want to see him in such a state of weakness – physical weakness. Nor did she want to listen to his apologies. How ironical, she thought, that a cold-blooded detective like him, who'd assumed such a disguise as he had for more than two years, and fought with but few allies an enemy who was like a swaying shadow, and _won_, could now be so tired and so sad.

"Man, Ran, I only wanted to _protect you_," he finished lamely.

And then Ran _knew _that she was madly, damnably in love with him, no matter what'd happened – she also knew that he'd so well protected her heart, so well wrapped it up in reassuring words and warm speeches, that he'd made it as fragile as glass, as easily breakable. She also knew it had just broken.

Its shattering was almost audible to _her_ ears, and for a mad second she thought he had heard it too. He was staring at her – it was only when their eyes locked that she noticed she had turned round – and she craved in her mind his features at that moment before shoving past him and making for the door.

"Oï… oï, RAN!"

She was out in the corridor and only halfway to the front door when he caught up with her, clutching her wrist and forcing her back to face him. Ran hardly knew what was happening now; she knew she wanted to get out of here, lest her heart should break some more, but her senses were blurred with overwhelming sensations bubbling in her stomach. She struggled immediately, but without any firm purpose; in a way, she even didn't quite know _who_ was holding her back, preventing her from running. Her hands, clutched into fists, banged against his chest, but the dead grip around her wrists only closed once more.

"Damnit, Ran, _wait!_"

"Let me go! Let me go, Shinichi! she shouted, somehow glad, in the midst of her confusion, that she was the fighting Ran again, in lieu of the crying one. "Let me go, or I'll… I'll _kick your ass off, you jerk! _Let GO of me!" She couldn't see anything – her hair was falling in front of her face, and she was shaking too hard for her mind not to be a blur – and Shinichi was talking – _shouting_ – in the background, but her mind refused to hear him through. His fingers were digging in her skin.

"– the point in bringing me here if you're only breaking me, you – you – That's not the way you can protect me anyway! I don't _want_ to be protected! I wanted to be _trusted! _I wanted to _help!_ But you don't care about that, do you? It's your own little selfish feelings, because you don't want to see me hurt… it's not as if you cared about that, is it? It's not as if you cared about me… it's just _protecting_ me that matt–"

In a swift move she should have seen coming but didn't, Shinichi pinned her against the nearest wall and kissed her without a second's warning. Ran gasped – it had been the work of a fraction of second, one moment she had been struggling in his arms, the other she was pressed between him and the cold, hard wall – and he took advantage of that to invade her mouth, his left arm snaking around her waist so that her body fitted against his, his right hand tilting her head towards him – and it was that moment reality chose to kick in.

Things, it stated, ran thus: she had been fighting Shinichi – fighting all right, his lower lip was cut open and bleeding; she felt the metallic taste of blood in her mouth – and now the same Shinichi was kissing her. Correction, _thoroughly_ kissing her. And she was mad at him – hadn't she been screaming blood murder in his face one second ago? For a moment she'd loathed him about as much as she loved him. Reason logically advised to break the kiss, slap him, and push off. It would be time later on – in the cold and snowy night – to ponder on causes and think about consequences.

Reason be damned. Ran set about enjoying this.

Well, it was nothing like the romanticism of first childish experiments and knees going jelly and the awkwardness of not knowing exactly when to breathe. Shinichi obviously didn't know where he was going any more than she did, but he clearly intended to make the most of it – his left hand roaming in her back, pressing her closer against him, fingers threading in her hair; the right one caressing her cheek with incredible softness, tilting her face upwards – Ran clung on for dear life.

He withdrew once, for, like, a millisecond; Ran had barely time to draw in a large gulp of air before his mouth crashed against hers again, reducing all oxygen-loading to unexpected chocking. Her fingers curled in the front of his shirt as her mouth began tentatively to move underneath his – that at least was welcome reaction to him, and he felt it safe enough to let go of her head and slide both arms around her waist, less afraid, probably, that she'd kick his ass off.

Once past the initial shock, Ran found this in fact thoroughly enjoyable – she had dreamt many times, too many times to count, of being kissed by Shinichi (brushed her fingertips against her lips at night, and wondered what _his_ would feel like) but this was going on a completely different track – she had never imagined she would be _melting_. As in, melting. Like honey.

She was getting immerged in the maze of this whole new concept when the structure of the kiss changed. Shinichi inched his hands down to rest them on her hips, slowly softening the kiss in order to pull away without causing too much damage. By that time booth of them were breathless and slightly panting. For a moment he was blessed with the sight of a lightly-flushed Ran, lips still half-open and graced by the faintest of smiles before she opened her eyes.

"Now look straight at me," he murmured, his voice getting firmer somewhere in the middle of his sentence, "and tell me again that I don't care about you."

Ran wasn't quite sure how to feel about that, so she flung herself in his arms.

Surprisingly, he still had balance enough to avoid falling right down. He stepped back, one arm keeping her close to him, the other ready to cushion their fall in case he couldn't make it, his back slammed hard against the opposite wall of the passage and a sharp moan escaped his lips as they flopped down to the floor, rather in a sitting position.

"_Ouch_ – Ran…"

She was shaking. Her arms were wounds tightly around his neck, fingers gripping at the fabric of his shirt, and her head lay on the bare stretch of skin between his right shoulder and his neck. Her breath and hair must be tickling his face, but it didn't seem to bother him; after a few moments to get over the shock he made a move forwards and hugged her back. He began talking – Ran couldn't understand a word, but his voice was gentle and soothing, and at length it was enough to calm her and reduce her shaking. She relaxed (though still clutching onto him), bent her face in his neck, and finally closed her eyes, rejoicing on the close embrace.

Peace settled in without letting them know. The first and only symptom of this was that Ran suddenly thought about the snow – it had probably stopped by now, and the ground must be immaculately white. She pictured the street just outside the house, bordered by a tall stone wall on the other side – carpeted in snow, with the black sky spreading overhead and the silver glow of occasional streetlamps, it must be a beautiful sight to behold. Right now, in the warmth of Shinichi's arms, it felt slightly surreal.

"Ran?" –he was running his fingers through her hair, and the black locks were caressing his fingers like swift water– "Are you alright?"

"Fine," she murmured. It took an effort to withdraw – to place her hands on his shoulders instead, and pull away. His face was so striking, in the grey darkness of the entry, she couldn't hemp lifting her hand to it, and gently tracing his features with her fingertips, marvelling in the reality of them, in the light purr he was making while leaning in the touch, in the breathtaking blue of his eyes when he opened them again and fixed them on her.

She tried to pull away some more, but he wouldn't let her. His hold around her tightened, bringing her back to leaning against him; she felt him place soft kisses on her hair and temples. The kisses slid down to her eyelids – she had them closed now – and lingered there before she heard him whisper,

"Did you really think I'd let you go that easily?"

"That's what you tried to do all this month," was the instinctive reply. She felt him stiffen, and knew that she had been right, that he had fully intended to let her go. He probably would have, if she hadn't come here tonight.

He sighed. "Yes." She breathed out deeply, tried to repress a shudder. "But I don't think I can take another month like that. Tonight has been too much for my decisions, I guess. If only–" his head dipped so that she could stare in his eyes – God how much she loved that blue "–you'll have me back."

He nuzzled against her nose, drawing a chuckle from her at this childish gesture. "Will you?"

Ran tried to ignore her heart swelling with unbelieving relief, "Baka. I already have."

There were many kisses more after that, as might justly be expected. Much, much later, however, when all the fluffiness was almost gone and all that remained was warmth and contentment and silence, she heard him murmur in her ear, "Tadaima, Ran-neechan."

-

**-embarrassed coughs- … well, yeah. More angsty fluff. (Or fluffy angst – you pick up. I like the first one better, though.) I really don't know what I had in mind when I began this, and it turned out weirdly. Gomen.**

**(correct me if I'm wrong) 'Tadaima' is supposed to mean, 'I'm home', or 'I'm back', or something of the sort. I expect most of you already know.**

**Liked it? Hated it? Let me know…**


	6. In The Dark

La technique de manipulation génétique agricole est employée contre la volonté de l'opinion publique Au sein de l'Union Europée

**Author's note** **I'm officially reading the ShinRan fics on this fandom aaallll ooovvveeerrrr aaagggaaaiiinnn. Yeah, you read that right. Bit of a job, ne? And you know, guys – you absolutely ROCK. Allll of you. It's awesome knowing every morning that there'll be new fanfics when I log in. Or discovering the small 'review alert' e-mail popping up… makes me feel all fuzzy inside. hugs herself happily**

**And of course, it's compelled me to write a ShinRan story, too. Take it as my declaration of love to all of you writers out there.**

**Inevitable Disclaimer: I unfortunately don't own Detective Conan… but I do own a soft-walled room in case I start banging my head against anything valuable. **

**In The Dark**

The lights went out.

Shinichi cursed in a way that would have done honour to Nakamori-keibu and Ran felt him more than she heard him get to his feet and make his way blindly toward the kitchen. She could barely see him in the darkness – the television's screen had extinguished as well and the black-out was total – only a vague dark-grey shape moving slowly and disappearing past the door.

He had gone out into a totally other world; she couldn't even hear him anymore. Maybe he'd pushed the door closed out of habit, cutting all sound from that part out of the living-room. She huddled comfortably into the couch where they had been sitting together only a minute ago – not too far but not too close either – and then lay fully on it, stretching; the material was still warm where Shinichi had been.

A second curse, coming from the distant kitchen, and she giggled – the all-powerful tantei, with the mutant brain and the steel-like nerves, fell back to the status of common mortal when it was dark and a kitchen chair happened to be in the way. She crossed her hands behind her head and stared dreamingly at the invisible ceiling.

This wasn't like being in one's bed at night; there's always dim lights coming from outside then. This was complete obscurity – the windows were not even visible through the darkness and she knew things were there more than actually saw them. It was a curious sensation. Maybe that was what blind people felt. The couch, for instance – she could feel it underneath her back but although she was so close to it she couldn't have said what colour it was if she didn't already knew it.

Red. She smiled in the dark.

When she was younger, there'd been thunderstorms like the one that presently raged outside, too; and in total black-outs such as this one, she had been afraid of what cupboard-monsters and ghosts and fantasies from her mind could be crawling towards her from the corners of the room. Even now, her heart squeezed lightly when she thought about those – but she knew now that in the world there were worst, much, much worst people than those childhood's monsters. That was what hovered in the dark now when she closed her eyes…

"Ran?"

She opened them again, expecting to meet Shinichi's smiling face in the faint, warm glow of a candleflame, but all that she could see were shades of grey and black and shadow puppets. He mustn't be very far, though – his voice came close from her right – maybe he was trying to make his way back to the couch.

"What's going on?" In the darkness, her voice floated, strangely ethereal; it didn't sound like hers, as if disembodied. She sat up and squinted – something slightly blacker than the background was moving some feet away.

"There aren't any candles anymore." A cry of sudden pain, another creative curse, and a few muffled thumps, as though he was jumping on only one foot. "If there are, I missed them. What is that _chair_ doing in the way, damn it!"

"More to the right, Shinichi. The couch's over here. What about torches?"

"Are you kidding? My parents, keeping torches? They wouldn't even think about thinking about thinking about it."

Ran thought about it, and came to the conclusion that he was right. The couch gave a loud squeaking of protestation when he dropped himself on it, and sighed. Though she couldn't see a limb of his, Ran knew he was pouting childishly at the ceiling, cursing mentally for his genitors' carelessness. "What about matches?" she suggested helpfully.

"'Used the last one when I was trying to fix my dinner," he avowed sheepishly.

"Uh-oh. I guess I don't even want to know."

"Shut up."

She laughed. "Wait. Maybe I have a lighter or something in my coat. I'll go check." She got to her feet, advanced slowly forwards… and admitted she had made a mistake. The first thing that entered in collision with her legs was the coffee table – correction, the coffee table's corner. She swore, suddenly feeling very sympathetic for Shinichi's former pains, hopped lightly on one foot two or three times, and very nearly crashed into a random chair, which seemed to have come placing itself in her way out of sheer malice.

"Shinichi? I don't think I can make it into the hall. Can you direct me over to the couch? I can't see anything right now."

Silence.

"Shinichi?" Her heart squeezed suddenly. "Shinichi, would you speak, please? I need to get back to the couch. It's _dark_." No answer. And fear – helpless, uncontrollable fear got hold of her without warning. Her lips moved silently, stumbling over words that got stuck in her throat. _Not again… Please, not __**again**_

"Shinichi?" her voice shivered, and he laughed, giving her relief at last. It was his laugh, sure enough – problem was, it certainly didn't come from the couch's direction. Unless she had turned towards the opposite wall while she wandered through the darkness… "Shinichi! Answer to me, damnit!"

"Ran." This time, it came from behind her. She swirled around, only to collide with another chair – or was it the same? had she simply turned around the table, without moving away? His voice was sounding so distant… "Ran?"

"Shinichi! Where _are_ you? What are you doing exactly?" She turned around slowly, trying to make the noise's direction out of the darkness. There were footsteps to be heard now as well, creaking carefully on the parquet's wooden slats, and then fading. The carpet around the television… "Shinichi, _answer to me!"_

He laughed again in the dark – it was a very soft laugh, like ripples on water. It sent shivers through her because it was so unlike him. She couldn't hear anything from him anymore, and the darkness was oppressing her like a lead cover, she was looking round helplessly but there was nothing to be seen, why were there so many chairs and tables around her suddenly? it was dark and silent and cold and airless, and she couldn't breathe–

"Ran."

"WHAAAH!"

This time, he was just behind her. Her back had just slammed against his chest, hard. His hands brushed against her shoulders and he was laughing, laughing at her ridiculous fright. "Damnit, Shinichi, don't scare me like that!" His body was warm. Warm and strong… though he hadn't got quite as far as taking her in his arms, and she was definitely _mad_ at him, she was glad he was close to her again. It was awful being lost in the dark.

"I thought you no longer believed in ghosts," he teased lightly, just like he used to do when they were kids. She rounded on him immediately, cheeks flushed, mouth wide open to retort abusively.

"I _don't!"_ she growled – how could he always anger her like nobody else could – and aimed a blow at his head which he blocked without any apparent difficulty. _How _had he done that anyway? The darkness around them was complete – though she felt him an inch away from her and her nose brushed against his shoulder now and then, she couldn't see him at all. She was forced to discern him with her other senses – feel his presence warm against her, smell his scent engulfing her forcibly, hear his rapid, cocky laugh.

"You're a pain in the ass, Shinichi – you really are."

"That's what you love me for." He said tauntingly, and a first-class blush spread heavily over her cheeks, making her thank Kami-sama for the darkness. Such teasing was okay in broad daylight, when she could go after him and beat the crap out of him in revenge – in _public,_ it was fine. But now that the obscurity pressed them together in dangerous intimacy, and she felt him and smelled him and heard him a thousand times stronger than usual–

"Shut up."

She moved away, feeling very hot in the face. She thought vaguely that if the lights switched back on at this precise moment, she'd be swimming in deep trouble… Yet it was satisfactory to hear sudden alarm in his voice, "Oi, Ran, don't move away from me, we won't find each other–"

The nerve.

She pushed her way a little farther in the darkness. The couch – hurrah! back to her starting point. But that would be the first place he would think she'd be, and he had a far better sense of direction than she did. And teasing was fun. She passed on.

"Ran?"

She chuckled in the dark, only to regret it immediately. The footsteps' noise changed, getting closer. "Raaan…" She hastily skimmed past the table, and hid on the muffling surface of the carpet. "Yes? Can't you find me anymore?" and rapidly made back for the couch, in a slipping move that didn't reach its objective.

SLAM!

They collided with one another so violently it knocked the wind out of them both and they collapsed to the floor together, without even being aware of anything but: "air air – need air – oxygen – can't breathe can't breathe–" and so on. This lasted… a while. Then air came back, and with it realisation.

"Um, Ran?"

His breath caressed her face quietly and the Blush Was Back, overdoing anything that it had been the first time over. She moved her lips wordlessly, silenced by the proximity of his own – say, a kiss away? Oh, damn that subconscious. All thought erased. ALL THOUGHT ERASED.

She wished she could move. She really, really wished she could. They were extremely close and _she_ was pinning him to the floor, her hands flat on his chest. She looked back up – or so to speak – and immediately regretted it: not only she couldn't see him any more than before, but their breaths were now mingling together in a way that could leave neither of them unharmed. It would be so easy… so easy in the dark…

What were his fingers doing in her hair… they strayed there as though out of total coincidence and remained there, lingering, feather-like, and she could almost feel the slight pressure that they did not stress, the imperceptible tilt that would make her dip her head. Her heart was throbbing so hard she was sure he heard it. In the darkness, it resounded strong and loud, as though the whole room had suddenly become a drum shell.

Their noses were brushing. Her hands had closed into fists in his shirt. He was breathing hard now, and so, probably, was she. She was shaking, anyway – she had not remarked it until now, but her whole body was shuddering and her hair fell trembling in long, black, silky locks onto his face. It was only then, what with that sudden outburst of her senses, that she noticed how much their legs were entangled, and their bodies pressed together and their lips a mere breath away and how… conspicuous that would seem if somebody came in with the lights back on and they hadn't made a move.

A move.

Save for the embarrassment, it would at least spare her the temptation to… the tempt–

"Shinichi?"

His fingers buried hard in her hair.

His lips were surprisingly blunt and harsh and demanding, and hers were just as much. It was one thing dreaming of happily ever afters and sunset kisses and white weddings, but it was another to be faced with – this, the sudden need urging up in her whole body, the craving want to deepen the kiss further and further and get lost into his warmth, the never-ceasing lust that kept swelling inside her like a balloon – making her grasp at his shoulder and making him flip her over on the carpet, hands already wandering under clothes – she was almost certain she had been wearing a jacket seconds ago – and yet already it was her T-shirt she was pressing against his, her bare arms that slid around his neck and pulled his head closer–

His lips descended into her collar, two buttons loose already, and his own shirt was irremediably ruffled – three buttons… his mouth caressed up her jawline gently, found her earlobe, nibbled at it, and got happily lost in her hair. His right hand seemed to be having a fun time as well, as it threaded with the silky black mass that scattered all over her shoulders. She couldn't help a gasp, a sharp moan when he found a particularly sensitive place in the nape of her neck, and he helpfully covered her lips again with his own, parting them gently.

She was blushing furiously, her senses were exploding like fireworks in her head and in her heart, her hormones were having the time of their lives, Shinichi was kissing her with all he was worth, and all she could think was…

Thank god for the darkness…

Some time later, as their little making-out session was slowing down to a halt and they lay together on the floor, gasping, bodies intertwined in warmth and the frantic beating of their hearts throbbing in unison, they began to laugh. All of it – the black-out, the darkness, their hide-and-seek play – suddenly appeared extremely funny. And now – now it was peaceful, and just, to be where they were.

"We've been idiots for a long time, I guess," Shinichi said, staring at the still invisible ceiling. His voice was still shivering with the excitement.

"Yeah…" Ran sighed, cradling her head on his shoulder and his hand came up to wander in her hair. He seemed to like doing that a huge lot. Not that she protested. She felt sleepy.

He turned his face to her – though she couldn't see it, she could feel his breath landing on her cheekbones and the light caress of his lips on her nose. "Feeling okay?" he asked, with something like concern in his tone.

Before she could answer that she felt better than she had felt in a long time, the lights came back on – and for a second they say themselves as they were, stretched on the floor, limbs entangled and breaths melting, the red of their flushed cheeks, the flash of blue of their eyes – then the lights plummeted out again.

"Oh, damn."

**I admit it – this is more **_**osé**_** than what I usually write. I confess everything, here's my written apology. But it was fun to write – hopefully to read, as well – and the idea of a fic occurring in complete darkness all the while struck me as interesting. Kind of. You get the idea.**

**extremely jumpy author heads towards the sunset with a crayon in one hand and a notebook in the other, and waves goodbye in the red-gold sunlight**


	7. With Every Beat

Author's note: DC's 56th volume just came out in France

**Author's note: DC's 56****th**** volume just came out in France! So yeah, of course I'd read it in English online before, but getting the translation in one's own language makes if different. Somehow. I have no idea why. And there was this little scene which hadn't struck me as very significant the first time over, and which triggered the idea to this drabble-like oneshot. So expect a mini-spoil.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own the rights of Detective Conan. A very talented Japanese mangaka does, and I'm merely borrowing the characters like we all love to do.**

**-**

**With Every Beat**

**-**

Later that night, when all the excitement of the day had plummeted to soft, lazy sleepiness, when all the memory of Conan-kun's life had gone way to leave Shinichi in his bed, weary and restless due to Kogoro's snoring in the bed up there, he could not help remembering the tenderness in Eisuke-kun's voice when he spoke of his sister donating blood to him.

But even that, and all the consequences of this speech on his search for Mizunashi Rena, could only disappear in the smiling face of Ran bending to him, and her sweet voice saying, "But that works for us as well, doesn't it? I've given my blood to you before… so? Do you feel my kindness inside?"

_Intensely_, he'd thought, his heart beating a lot faster and cheeks blushing as though his blood was answering to hers. And now it struck him as strange that he'd never given more attention to that particular point in their relationship. It was true she'd given him blood, thus saving his life, but back then he'd had another preoccupation to think about – her knowing about being of the same blood as him meant her knowing he was Shinichi. And when that had finally been solved out with Haibara's aid, the whole matter of blood-donating had already slipped out of his head.

When exactly had they learnt of their being of the same blood type? He didn't know; he couldn't remember. It lay far in the past, as natural as snow falling in winter and water being wet. But now that he thought about it, it was yet another link relating them through time and space – one of those that his shrinking had not been able to erase – another red thread linking them indefinitely, wherever they went, however far from each other.

He contemplated his hand and wrist in the semi-greyness of the bedroom; followed the intricate circulation of the veins, pale-blue beneath his translucent skin, felt the faint pulse beating his life there. The life she had saved, once more, unknowingly, for the hundredth time. Without being aware of it. Without ever being aware of anything, least of all what he felt about it.

He touched the pulse point at the base of the wrist and thought it was also her blood he felt beating there – hers and his, mingled together forever more. Until he died, whatever happened to them in between, there would always be a small part of her living with him, _in him. _Forever more.

With every beat that sent blood racing through his body, it was also her heart that throbbed, her heart that pulsed in unison with his. Not with Conan-kun's – with Shinichi's, at last. Here they could finally be together – here was the final refuge he'd sought all along. Hidden deep inside him. Hidden deep, and yet proving itself alive, with every beat he felt.

"_Do you feel my kindness inside?"_ he heard her ask again in an echo of this afternoon's, her gentle voice rippling away in the bedroom's relative silence with silk ruffling. And once again he thought, _Intensely, Ran._ His hand fell limp onto the futon's blanket, and yet he could still feel his blood, her blood, their blood pulsing, throbbing inside. _Intensely…_

With every beat…

-

**FLUFF ATTACK! Randomness was hard at work tonight. And my muse is presently sitting cross-legged on the carpet juggling with red hearts. (Note to anaime7: yes, it's wild-haired, too. Isn't yours?) **

**This is dedicated straight to Rani-chan, without whom I shouldn't have read the last chapters of DC (Shinichi came BACK! Wooooohhhhhh! Goes crazy for about the twentieth time since this afternoon), I LOVE you!**

**So I'm going to sleep. Right now. Going to sleep. In my bed. Yep. (Have had waaayyy too much chocolate again today…)**

**Hope you liked the read, minna-san!**


	8. Shades For Shades

Author's note: I began writing rather short oneshots alongside the typing in of Lawyer's Problem – mostly ShinRan and AokoKaito

**Author's note: I began writing rather short oneshots alongside the typing in of Lawyer's Problem – mostly ShinRan and AokoKaito ones – when I get bored in class, so you should be seeing them often enough :) This one struck me once and it never left.**

**Warning: Rating rather higher than the others. Nothing graphic, but understandable enough.**

**Disclaimers: Detective Conan is owned by one genius japanese mangaka – so, not mine. The song is 'My Vampire Heart,' by Tom Mc Rae – I originally found it on a totally other fandom for a totally other couple, but it fitted so well…**

**-**

**Shades for Shades**

**-**

_Darling I'm lost_

_Adrift in the dark_

It was nighttime.

Nighttime was the only place for them to meet. In full daylight there were too many risks to be seen, on his side or on hers. But in the darkening greys of dusk, where shades were shades and cast off the meant-to-be cliché, it was safe enough to meet again – though the reason for meeting again and again when they were supposed to hate each other's guts, it was best for then to ignore.

_I'm clutching your words_

_To my vampire heart_

"She was a traitor."

"Isn't that my line?"

The same empty words repeated a hundred times over.

"I didn't kill her." The firmness of her voice, stating what they both knew. "I was offered her position." A pregnant pause and he turned to her, blue eyes sharp in the shadows of the tree's falling branches. She could barely outline his features, sitting beside her on the bench, and the chiselled lines of his features.

_So let in the light_

_Turn me to dust_

_If it don't end in bloodshed, dear,_

_It's probably not love_

"And you took it," he said. The whisper of his voice was perhaps worse than if he had shouted. She slipped in closer to him, cat-like in her moves, and wrapped both her arms around his chest, her head coming down to rest on his shoulder.

"It was my decision," she breathed out in his neck, and he shivered like he did every time. Her fingers came running in her silky hair, threading with the long black locks, tracing her skin at the back of her nape. "Did I have the choice?"

_Here we are,_

_In the darkest place_

_My reflection_

_Shows only your face_

"_I_ had the choice," he whispered against her ear. "And so did you, angel."

The nickname pierced her like an arrow and she rapidly extricated herself from her cradle against him.

"I'd best go," she said, quickly. "I've been here far too long. It was a mistake to come at all," and turned to leave, but not fast enough to escape his grabbing her wrist. He spun her back to him, holding her easily, and she hardly opposed any resistance at all as his lips crushed hers.

_And I spilled someone's blood_

_I broke someone's heart again_

It was not a loving kiss.

It was a wild, shabby, dominating kiss, teeth biting more than lips caressed, and she gave in easily, immediately hooking her hands in his hair before kissing furiously He pushed her against him as he fought his way in with as ferocious a passion as she fought hers, until they broke apart, panting. Two adversaries, glaring, out of breath, yearning, yielding, half-winning and half-lost already, and yet unable to resist the irresistible attraction that brought their lips together again.

It was a kiss that had a bitter taste of hopelessness.

_Someone you know_

_You're looking at him, my friend…_

There had been many kisses before, like there would be many others, and all had been like that: lips battling to dominate, hands entangling, bodies fighting, moans and gasps muffled to hide them to the other. Two adversaries, giving in and craving with a thirst that would never be quite appeased, fighting for control of themselves only to discover in surrender the sweetest things of all.

Every time they parted they meant it to be for good, but every time they kept coming back from more – and such were their meetings. Every time was the last time, because they didn't know if they would be able to join again in this endless dance of losing first and winning last; because the night would have to meet its end, and daylight was too bright for their eyes.

_And the people_

_In our lives_

_We all leave behind_

_Leave behind…_

How exactly they made their way to his house they never knew for sure. The door had hardly slammed shut that they were already pinned down against the wall, far into the process of stripping off clothes; they tumbled on into the nearest guest's room and onto the bed, where mouths found themselves again and hands removed the last layers of clothing; the feel of skin against skin was burning.

They had learnt to know each other's body by heart now. Yet every time it was the same discovery, the same delicate structure sharply built they destroyed and constructed again without ever growing tired of it. Two adversaries, dying slowly from the most beautiful of deaths in one another's arms, leaving behind a battlefield void of any winner.

_Here we are,_

_In the darkest place_

_To keep from forgetting,_

_I picture your face_

They substituted passion, need, lust, to what should have been love, care, want; they could not _allow_ themselves to love in the situation such as it was. And yet they endlessly met in each other's arms – they knew the risk, they knew the cost – but they were addicted already. It was stronger than the strongest drug, more intoxicating than the greatest intoxication – once they had tasted it they could never turn away.

One night together was all that it had taken.

_And I wonder,_

_While we count the cost_

And as the night darkened by degrees, they lay traps for the other to fall into, and let themselves be blissfully lured and tricked and drowned under; their passion burned and flared through the hours, and never cooled down until the morning cold. Until, finally breaking the rules of silence – a gasped name, a moan hardly stifled – he found himself touched by the fingers of an angel – an angel, fallen from grace and finding perfection in eyes far too blue.

_Which is sweeter,_

_Love or its loss_

She woke up first as always was the case. She shifted on her side, to meet the sleeping face of the raven-haired man lying next to her, eyes closed, breathing even. He looked restful, peaceful even, and although he knew very well he could wake to the cold contact of a gun barrel on his forehead, yet he slept on through these small hours, even going as far as loosely draping an arm around her figure.

Two adversaries, tangled up in one another as the first lights of day came in through the shades, tired of too long a battle.

_So I crush you,_

_My vampire heart_

She disentangled herself from the leg knot he had drawn her into, carefully, moving in slow, fluid motions to avoid waking him at all costs, and started through the clothes scattered on the floor. As she pulled them on, her eyes never left the sleeping silhouette under the white bedsheets; and she sat beside him and flicking away stray locks of black hair, delicately traced his features. She dared not kiss – the barest breath – his half-parted lips. Hastily snapping out of it, she put on her long black coat.

She left before the crack of dawn.

_For letting me love you_

_Love you…._

Outside the air was cold and sharp. She took in a long breath after she'd clicked shut the gate of his house. Walking down Beika street in the greyish shades slowly clearing around her, Mouri Ran let herself become Kir again.

_For letting me love you_

_From the start_

_-_

**Honestly, I don't think a second that Ran would ever join the BO. Ever. But it was a nice idea, and it gave rather an odd, twisted perspective to the oneshot… besides, it's been eating my mind.**

**Also, a great many thanks – and a whole plateful of home-made cookies – for the awesome people who reviewed Gem's Entry's last chapter. You truly made my days.**


End file.
